Hazy Shade of Winter
by Mariner
Summary: Who was Maggie Walsh and what made her tick?
1. Hazy Shade of Winter -- Chapter 1

Hazy Shade of Winter 1

_**Disclaimer: **Maggie Walsh, Riley Finn, Forrest Gates, Graham Miller, the Initiative, and all other characters and concepts from _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ are copyright © 2001 21 Century Fox Corporation. I'm just borrowing them to play with._

_**Notes**: I researched military life as best I could, but I have no first-hand experience, so apologies in advance for any glaring inaccuracies. Ft. Tyrone is a fictional location, invented to suit the geographical needs of my story.   
**Dedication**: This story, more than any of my others, owes its existence to my intrepid beta readers. Big thanks to Keith, Dori, Gyrus and Narcissus._

**Hazy Shade of Winter -- Part 1**  
**by [Mariner][1]**

  
  


> I  
  

> 
> David Page Army Medical Center  
Ft. Tyrone, Ill.  
December 1, 1995
> 
> It was going to be a bad morning. Maggie Walsh knew it the moment she set foot outside her front door and was greeted by a spray of frozen rain, borne along on a gust of icy wind that cut through her heaviest winter coat as if it wasn't there. The traffic-choked drive to base -- forty-five minutes for what was normally a fifteen-minute trip -- didn't improve matters; neither did the empty coffee pot that greeted her in the staff lounge beneath a lopsided "Happy Holidays" banner. Even with all that, she didn't really start to worry until Peter Seville said, "Good morning, Major."
> 
> Seville was the head of Psychiatric. Like Maggie, he had been recruited into the Army from a successful civilian practice and tended to think of himself as a doctor rather than an officer. He never addressed his staff members by rank unless he was about to say something they didn't want to hear. Maggie muttered a resigned "Good morning, Colonel," and busied herself with the coffee maker, hoping he would at least give her time to thaw out before he broke the news.
> 
> He didn't. "Stewart and Zimmerman both got the flu. So it's you, me and Brady for the rest of the week."
> 
> "Wonderful." Nearly half the hospital staff was down with the flu since Thanksgiving, or at least claiming to be. Maggie privately thought that at least a few of them were faking it to get out of filling in for their genuinely sick colleagues. "I don't suppose all their patients came down with it too, and cancelled their appointments?"
> 
> "No such luck." Seville sighed. "I need you to take one of Stewart's new cases. You're the only one with a free schedule."
> 
> "I'm not free," she said quickly. "I've got--"
> 
> "You've got tons of paperwork and a whole mess of meetings, all of which can wait. I know your workload, Major. I assign it, remember?" Seville gave Maggie an impatient glare over the gold rims of his glasses. "Take the case. It won't kill you to actually see a patient once in a while."
> 
> Maggie bit back an instinctive protest as she followed Seville into his office, pausing only for a single longing glance at the percolating coffee maker. It was true that her work -- her official work, anyway -- over the past eighteen months had consisted mainly of administrative duties, but she'd done plenty of clinical work prior to that, both in and out of the military, even if most of it didn't involve actual one-on-one counseling. And even this year, with her workload unofficially doubled, she had taken her share of the hospital's group therapy sessions and anti-stress workshops. The men behind her new project had made a great deal of fuss over the importance of keeping up the appearance of normalcy in her professional and private life, so slacking off had not been an option. Unfortunately, pointing any of it out to Seville was not an option either.
> 
> Seville's office was filled with a remarkable assortment of very non-military clutter. There were golfing trophies, framed photos of children and grandchildren, a collection of Murano paperweights, stacks of paperback mysteries, and old pictures of Seville himself, with less stomach and more hair. His inbox was a small mountain of folders, envelopes and loose papers, festively decorated with color-coded Post-it notes. And yet, faced with all that apparent chaos, he snatched the correct file from the desk on the first try, without even having to look closely.
> 
> "Here you go. This guy's scheduled for an intake interview this afternoon, so Stewart hasn't even spoken with him yet, but she's done the prep work, so all the information you need to start should be in here. He was scheduled for thirteen hundred, but I switched him to sixteen hundred to give you time to prepare."
> 
> "Thanks." Maggie looked down dubiously at the manila folder in her hand, labeled "Finn, Riley D." in neat black lettering. "I guess I'd better get started, then."
> 
> Fifteen minutes later, having achieved coffee, Maggie sat down in her bright, clutter-free office to read through the file on one Riley Douglas Finn, 2nd Lieut. According to the neatly typed biographical form, Finn had been commissioned full-time a little over a year ago, after graduating from the ROTC program at Iowa State, and posted to Kigali in late January. In August, his platoon was ambushed by Hutu guerillas while returning to base after a training exercise.
> 
> A brief web-surfing detour established that Kigali was the capital of Rwanda. Maggie made a mental note to brush up on her geography, fetched a donut from the pantry to go with the coffee, and went back to her reading.
> 
> "Lt. Finn was inside a farmhouse when it collapsed," the report informed her blandly. "He was trapped in the rubble for several hours before his men dug him out."
> 
> There were medical records from hospitals in Kigali and Johannesburg. Maggie put them aside for later study and moved straight to the most recent record, compiled after Finn was transferred to Ft. Tyrone. It was the physician in charge of Finn's physical therapy who referred him to Psychiatric. Maggie turned to the second page of the referral form, where the doctor had described his reasons for the decision.
> 
> "Lt. Finn's progress has stalled since his arrival here two months ago," she read. "He consistently cuts his PT sessions short, complaining of dizziness, chest pains, nausea, and constrained breathing. The one time he tried to press on despite the discomfort, he collapsed, and was ill for the next two days. Three medical examinations by three different doctors found no conclusive physical cause for the symptoms.
> 
> Though he apparently showed no psychological symptoms immediately after the incident in Rwanda, I suspect Lt. Finn may be suffering from delayed post-traumatic stress disorder, and recommend counseling. It is my belief that his physical recovery will not move forward until the issue is resolved."
> 
> Maggie didn't put much stock in psychiatric diagnoses from non-psychiatrists, but this seemed reasonable enough, so she scribbled "PTSD?" in pencil on the margin of the referral form and picked up the Kigali report, skimming quickly through the medical details. Fractured left tibia, compound fracture of right tibia, dislocated left shoulder, three fractured ribs, concussion... for someone who had a house fall on him, Finn seemed to have gotten off relatively easy. Still, the right leg had required surgery and was still not fully healed over four months later. Any signs of emotional trauma could easily have gone unnoticed by doctors more concerned with his survival. So she jotted a question mark in the margin next to the physician's comments, and went on with her reading.
> 
> By the time Finn showed up, at sixteen hundred on the dot, she had gone through the entire file twice and was feeling reasonably well-prepared, if not enthusiastic. She gave Finn her best professional smile as he came in.
> 
> He entered awkwardly, leaning on a cane and heavily favoring his right leg. He was 23 according to his records, but looked younger. She would've taken him for a teenager, despite his height and powerful build. Hell, Michael had looked no older than that when he--
> 
> _No._ She pushed all thoughts of Michael out of her head and focused on the matter at hand.
> 
> "Good afternoon, Lieutenant."
> 
> Finn nodded politely as he shook hands with her across the desk. "Good afternoon, uhm... Doctor? Major?"
> 
> "Whichever you prefer."
> 
> "Major, then." He sat down, leaned his cane against the side of the chair, and straightened his collar, which did not at all need straightening. Like most people in a psychiatrist's office, he looked as if he'd rather be just about anywhere else. Maggie had long ago learned not to take it personally.
> 
> "Do you know why you're here?" she asked him.
> 
> Finn's expression turned wry. "Because Dr. Lerner told me I had to come."
> 
> "Do you disagree?"
> 
> "I'm not sure." Finn shifted in his chair. "I know I haven't been doing so great lately." He shifted again, slumping a bit lower in his seat, and stared intently at the toes of his boots. Maggie waited to see if he would say anything else, but all he did was sit there looking dejected.
> 
> All right, so this wouldn't be one of those dream cases where the patient bares his soul the moment he sits down. Maggie tapped the folder on her desk with one finger, making Finn look up at her.
> 
> "What haven't you been doing great at?"
> 
> "I don't know... everything." Finn's voice was tired. "I can't concentrate. I've been working in the motor pool -- they've got me on Casual Status until I'm well enough to do real work -- and I lost a truck last month. Took me two days to find it." He shook his head, looking as if he couldn't quite comprehend his own failure. "I don't think I've ever lost anything bigger than a pencil in my whole life, and now I go and lose a truck. And I keep keeling over in physical therapy. Dr. Lerner says I might've been walking without a cane by now, if I'd followed my training schedule. And I want to, I really do, it's just... I keep falling apart, and I don't know why." Finn ran one hand through his hair in a nervous gesture, and fixed Maggie with a bewildered look, big puppy-dog eyes pleading for an answer. The expression made him look even younger, and Maggie had to fight down the urge to reach across the desk and pat him on the head.
> 
> "These dizzy spells of yours -- is there anything specific that triggers them? A particular exercise? A memory, a word, a smell? Do they always happen at the same time?" Maggie asked the question for form's sake, not expecting an affirmative answer, and was not surprised when Finn shook his head.
> 
> "No, nothing like that." He sank down lower in the chair, stretching his legs out in front of him, bumped his feet against Maggie's desk, and pulled himself up again, looking apologetic. Maggie wondered if he was always this fidgety, or if the conversation was making him unusually nervous. "Look, I know Dr. Lerner thinks I've got some deep hidden trauma left over from Rwanda, but I think he's just grasping at straws. He can't figure out what's wrong with me, so he's decided it must all be in my head."
> 
> "And the other three doctors who examined you?"
> 
> Finn shrugged. "They can't figure it out, either. Doesn't mean there's nothing there."
> 
> "No," Maggie said mildly, "it doesn't. But it wouldn't hurt to examine all the possibilities, don't you think?"
> 
> Finn spread his hands in a resigned gesture. "I'm here, aren't I? Examine away."
> 
> The words were accompanied by yet another fit of chair-squirming, and this time Maggie caught the slight wince as he rearranged his legs. She could've slapped herself for missing the obvious. He wasn't fidgeting; he was in pain.
> 
> "Is this chair uncomfortable for you? We can go next door. There's a recliner in there."
> 
> "I'm fi--" Finn bit back the automatic denial, hesitated a moment, then nodded gratefully. "Actually, yeah, that would be nice." He picked up his cane from the floor and hauled himself to his feet with a grunt. 
> 
> Maggie and Seville shared a single consulting room that was adjacent to both their offices. Like all the other rooms in the building, it was painted a rather unpleasant shade of beige and fitted with fluorescent lights and cheap plastic vertical blinds over the window. Seville had made an attempt to counteract the institutional atmosphere with framed nature photographs and potted plants, but Maggie considered the result to be a noble failure. Still, it did have an oversized reclining chair for the patient, and a not-too-hideous desk and chair setup for the doctor. Maggie sat down behind the desk and watched Finn settle himself in the recliner. He raised the footrest and propped his right leg on it, glancing at Maggie with a sheepish expression.
> 
> "I feel like my own grandfather," he muttered. "Bitching that my leg hurts when the weather turns cold. Maybe I could solve all my problems by transferring someplace nice and hot. Then again, I _was_ someplace nice and hot, and that didn't work out too well, did it?"
> 
> "How much time do you spend thinking about it?" Maggie asked. "About what happened in Rwanda, I mean."
> 
> "None," Finn said promptly.
> 
> "None at all?" Maggie allowed a trace of polite skepticism to show in her voice, and Finn responded with an embarrassed half-smile.
> 
> "I don't mean I blocked it all out or anything. It's just that... I see no point in dwelling, you know? It's over. I'm alive. I've got bigger things to worry about than something that happened on the other side of the world four months ago."
> 
> That sounded so eminently reasonable that Maggie immediately disbelieved it, just on principle. Expressing that disbelief, however, would likely do more harm than good. She didn't want to put Finn on the defensive so early. 
> 
> "So you've put it behind you, then? It never comes up unexpectedly in your thoughts or in conversation?"
> 
> "Oh, it comes up. It's not like I ever forget _why_ I'm hobbling around with a cane. I just don't go all broody and traumatized about it, that's all."
> 
> "I see." Maggie allowed another expectant pause, which Finn once again failed to fill with useful information. "Do you think it's wrong to be, uhm... 'broody and traumatized' after being seriously wounded in combat?"
> 
> "Wrong? No, I wouldn't say that. Just..." Finn hesitated, as if searching for the right word. "Pointless." 
> 
> "And you never do pointless things?"
> 
> "I try not to." He smiled at her, looking more sincere and wholesome than anyone over the age of twelve had a right to. "Besides, I wasn't wounded in combat."
> 
> "Oh?" Maggie did her best not to look surprised. "The report said--"
> 
> "I know it looks that way on paper. But that's not really how it was. The fighting took only a few minutes, and no one was killed or anything. Afterwards, we were checking around for injured civilians. There were all these little houses on one side of the road that got damaged in the shooting. I thought I saw somebody moving inside one, so I went in to look, and the roof came down on me." He winced slightly, and massaged his right leg just below the knee. "It was just rotten luck, really."
> 
> For all his attempts to sound relaxed and well-adjusted, Finn was clearly uncomfortable with the subject. He was fidgeting again, and his smile began to look forced, off-set by deep worry lines that hadn't been there a few moments before. It made him look older.
> 
> "Bad luck or not," Maggie said, "It must've been painful and frightening. The fact that you weren't in combat couldn't have been much comfort at the time, I imagine?"
> 
> Finn shrugged. "I suppose not. It's kind of a blur, really. I mean, I know it must've hurt like hell, but the first time I actually remember feeling pain is later, in the ambulance. I guess I was in shock for a while. Same thing with being afraid. I was scared to death at the hospital, when no one would tell me how badly I was hurt, and I kept wondering if they were going to amputate my legs or something. But at the time it was all actually happening... all I could actually think about was lemonade."
> 
> "_Lemonade?_" Maggie repeated, startled. Finn gave a soft, self-conscious laugh.
> 
> "I know it's stupid. But there was all this dust when the roof fell in. Clouds of it, everywhere. I must've inhaled a pound of the stuff. My mouth was coated with it. And I was _so_ thirsty... So I'm lying there with two broken legs and a cracked skull, all these guys working to dig me out, and all I can think of is how I want some lemonade. The homemade kind my grandmother makes, really tart, in a tall glass over crushed ice. I don't think I've ever wanted anything so badly in my whole life."
> 
> "Ever get any?"
> 
> "No," Finn muttered plaintively. "I asked at the hospital later, and they gave me some sugary crap made from a powder, and it was _pink_."
> 
> The last word was spoken in such a deeply aggrieved tone that Maggie had to fight hard not to laugh. It was a nice story. A nice, distracting story, and she had to admire the smooth way Finn had worked it into the conversation at just the right time to make himself look talkative and forthcoming, when in fact he was being evasive. Whatever it was that had him misplacing trucks and suffering mysterious collapses four months after the traumatic event, Maggie was fairly sure it wasn't the lack of good lemonade.
> 
> "When you were at the hospital in Kigali, did you get a chance to talk to anyone about what had happened? I assume there was an AAD?" After Action Debriefings were standard procedure following combat or any hard action, and their purpose, in theory at least, was to prevent exactly the sort of post-traumatic reaction that Finn was apparently having now.
> 
> "We had one, yes," he said. "But I wasn't there. Captain Harrison really wanted to have it within 72 hours of the ambush, and I was still pretty woozy then, drifting in and out after surgery, so--"
> 
> "They held it _without_ you?" Maggie made a mental note to say a few choice words to Captain Harrison, should she ever run into him. The 72 hours guideline was meant to be just that, a guideline, not set in stone; and excluding a wounded participant from an AAD was inexcusable.
> 
> "It's no big deal," Finn said dismissively. "I mean, what were they going to do, crowd the whole platoon into my room while I'm lying there in traction?"
> 
> "If necessary, yes. You should've been there."
> 
> "Believe me, at the time, I needed some peace and quiet a lot more than I needed to sit around talking about my feelings. Not that there's anything wrong with that -- talking about feelings, I mean -- it just wasn't high on my list of priorities then."
> 
> "Well, that was then, and this is now." Maggie put down her pen and closed her notebook, feeling resigned. Much as she wanted to send Lieutenant Finn back to his physician with a clean bill of mental health, she honestly felt she couldn't. His symptoms -- assuming he was truthful in describing them -- seemed to rule out a PTSD diagnosis,but _something_ was not right there. "And right now, I strongly believe you would benefit from counseling. I'm going to recommend bi-weekly sessions to start with, and another evaluation after about a month. After that... well, we'll see."
> 
> Finn looked as if he wanted to argue, but stopped himself in time. "All right," he said in a resigned voice. "When do we start?"
> 
> II
> 
> "Hello, Michael." Maggie sat down next to her son's bed, carefully cradling a styrofoam cup in her hands -- her fifth coffee of the day, decaf this time. "Sorry I'm late. It was a hectic day. Not that the rest of my days have been especially quiet lately, but I got saddled with a new patient at the last moment, and it threw my whole schedule off... You need a haircut again." She brushed his bangs away from his eyes.
> 
> "He's a nice kid. My patient, I mean. Lieutenant Riley Finn." Maggie blew on her coffee, and took a sip. "Just a couple of years older than you. Reminded me of you a little, actually. Don't know why. You're really not at all alike, except for being tall. Maybe it's that innocent baby-face you both make when you're trying to be evasive." She smiled fondly, and a little wistfully. It had been years since she'd last seen Michael's evasive baby-face. "I suppose you don't think it's flattering to be compared to an Army boy. Too establishment for you?" Michael had never bothered to hide his contempt for all things military. To Maggie, the Army had been the perfect way to construct a new, more structured and secure life after the divorce. To Michael, it was irrefutable proof of his mother's moral bankruptcy. Words like "fascist," "imperialist," and "conformist" had littered his vocabulary at regular intervals, and apparently at random. Once, in a fit of irritation, Maggie had handed him a dictionary and told him to look up what they meant, and he wouldn't speak to her for two days.
> 
> Ironic that it was the Army -- or at least the Army's benefits package -- that kept him alive now. A thin, wasted body in a narrow bed, no longer recognizable as the boy Maggie remembered. Each time she came here, she found herself half-hoping that the doctors were right, that Michael was completely unaware of himself and his surroundings. Because if he was aware, he had to hate this place, with the sterile white walls and fluorescent lights, the linoleum floor and no windows. Over the years, Maggie had filled the room with mementos of his life from before the accident: his favorite comforter, his childhood teddy bear, his Little League trophy. But a hospital room still looked like a hospital room, no matter how you decorated it.
> 
> "This is a bad time of year to be a psychiatrist," Maggie said. "Everyone's got the flu, or the holiday doldrums, or both. I suppose I should count myself lucky I've only got the one extra patient. But it's still a nuisance." She brushed the back of one hand lightly against Michael's cheek. He needed a shave, as well as a haircut. She'd have to speak to the nurses. "Not a nice way for a doctor to be thinking about a patient, is it? I suppose I've got the holiday doldrums too, in my own way." She took another sip of the coffee, savoring the smell and the warmth of it, if not the taste. The Psychiatric Center was located in a separate building from the main hospital, so she had to cross a street and a parking lot every time she visited Michael after work. Normally the short walk didn't bother her much, even in winter, but the cold today had been particularly biting. Even now, sitting in a warm room with a hot drink, she felt a little chilled. 
> 
> Michael hated the cold. He'd been furious when Maggie accepted the transfer from the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. to Ft. Tyrone.
> 
> "It's supposed to snow this weekend. That's what the man on the morning news said, anyway. Of course he said that a number of times last year, too, and all we ever got was slush. But Mrs. Hawthorne -- she's the old lady in the upstairs apartment -- says her left hip is hurting just like it always does before a blizzard, and she's lived here thirty years, so I guess she ought to know."
> 
> She continued drinking and making small talk about the weather, keeping a careful eye on Michael the whole time. His responsiveness varied from day to day. Sometimes he showed no signs of life at all. Other times he would blink, turn his head, make soft, incoherent sounds. When she squeezed his hand, he would squeeze back. And once, about six months after the accident, he lifted his head from the pillow and whispered "Mommy?" before lapsing into silence again.
> 
> The doctors didn't believe her when she told them about it. Persistent vegetative state, they said. No awareness. Capable only of mechanical responses, not meaningful gestures. Random noises, not words. It only sounded like "Mommy" to Maggie because it was what she wanted to hear. Eventually, Maggie gave up arguing about it. It didn't really matter, since Michael never spoke again.
> 
> Today was one of his unresponsive days, and Maggie's forced enthusiasm for the weather quickly dwindled. She finished her coffee in silence and got up, grabbing her coat from the back of the chair.
> 
> "Good night, dear. I'll see you tomorrow." She kissed Michael on the forehead and quickly left the room.
> 
> The visit left her depressed and tired, wanting nothing more than to drive home, take a hot bath, and go to bed. Instead, Maggie turned her car south upon leaving the base, in the opposite direction from her house. A half-hour crawl through the traffic down Park Street put her on Route 17 heading south out of town. It was a bad road to drive even in good weather, serpentine and badly lit. With an inch of half-frozen slush coating the asphalt, it became nearly impossible to negotiate. After only a few miles, Maggie's hands began to ache from gripping the steering wheel too tightly. She thought about calling the lab on her cell phone to tell them she was taking the night off, but it would only mean more work later.
> 
> Fifteen miles south of town, Maggie turned off the highway onto a narrower road, its entrance marked with prominently lit "No trespassing" signs. She followed it for half a mile before braking to a stop in front of an eight foot-high chain link fence. Coils of razor wire topped the fence, and more signs warned against trespassing. In the distance, the windows of the laboratory building made a pale grid of light in the dense darkness. Maggie knew, though she couldn't see them, that infrared security cameras watched her from the trees.
> 
> In front of the fence and off to the side stood a metal pole with a featureless black box attached to it. Maggie pulled the glove off her left hand, rolled down the window, and reached out to press her hand against the box. Despite the cold that crept up her sleeve and numbed her face, the smooth surface felt slightly warm. After a few seconds, there was a grinding of gears, and a section of fence slid sideways to clear the way for Maggie's car.
> 
> There was another checkpoint a little further down the road, this one with an actual live guard who greeted Maggie by name, but still took the time to closely examine her ID before waving her on. She parked in the lot in front of the building, noting Angleman's silver Toyota sitting in its usual spot, and hurried inside. 
> 
> Someone had decorated for the holidays in the past 24 hours, draping a "Season's Greetings" banner over the front door and pasting paper snowflakes on the walls in the lobby. The guard at the front desk had his clock radio playing Christmas carols. He gave Maggie a broad grin as she put her name on the sign-in sheet, and she managed a cordial smile back. She sincerely hoped Angleman hadn't been infected by the holiday spirit, too. That would be just too much to handle.
> 
> She needn't have worried. True, Angleman was looking rather pleased with himself when Maggie walked into the lab, but then he usually looked like that.
> 
> "Ah, Dr. Walsh! I was just waiting for you." Angleman was holding a thick stack of computer printout, with more pages spread out on the metal table in front of him. "I have encouraging news."
> 
> "Good. I could use some." Maggie fetched her lab coat from the closet and put it on. "What's happening?"
> 
> Angleman's expression grew even more smug than before -- something Maggie would've thought impossible. "I believe I've finally isolated the healing factor."
> 
> "Again?" Maggie sniffed, unimpressed. "You said that the last six times, too."
> 
> "Well, this time it's true." Angleman huffed, pushing open the door to the adjacent room. "I'm sure of it. Well... almost sure."
> 
> The room had originally been used for storage, but Maggie and Angleman had had it converted to a more necessary function three months before. Now, a wall of electrified steel bars bisected the space, turning the back half of the room into a narrow cage that housed their research subject.
> 
> It crouched against the back wall, growling deep in its throat, peering at the two scientists with tiny, vicious eyes. It had a squat, thickly muscled body, somewhat like a gorilla's, but covered with coarse gray scales rather than fur. The face, with its elongated snout, looked like a cross between a lizard and a pig. Thick-fingered hands, disturbingly human-like except for the black razor-edged claws, scraped against the floor with a sound that set Maggie's teeth on edge. No matter how many times she looked at the thing, it always made her skin crawl.
> 
> This wasn't what she'd originally signed up for when she agreed to work on the project. Back then, the goal had been straightforward and fairly modest: look for ways to decrease combat stress by conditioning the soldiers before action, with drugs and conditioned response training, rather than counseling them afterwards. It had been an interesting challenge, and after fifteen months Maggie had gathered material for two lengthy -- and highly classified -- papers based on her work. Still, none of it was earth-shattering stuff.
> 
> Until September, when the lab had suddenly been invaded by stone-faced men whose appearance had screamed military, though they had all worn suits and ties. Suddenly, Maggie's security clearance no longer covered her own project, and there had been weeks of tense interviews and background checks before she could get upgraded and return to work. And return she did -- only to discover that the work had changed. Her new research partner was a biochemist with no psychiatry background. Her new subject was a monster straight out of a bad horror movie. And somehow Maggie Walsh was supposed to figure out not only what made it tick, but how it could be made useful to the U.S. Army.
> 
> The creature -- designated a Hostile Sub-Terrestrial on the paperwork that accompanied it -- was a mystery. Maggie had no idea where it had come from, how it had been captured, whether or not there were any others. These weren't "need to know" things, apparently, even with her shiny new security clearance. After three months, she and Angleman still weren't even sure if the thing was male or female. It had no recognizable reproductive organs, external or internal. What it did have was an uncanny ability to heal almost any injury within minutes of receiving it. Even the incisions from the surgery Maggie and Angleman had done in their attempt to discover its sex had healed in less than an hour, leaving no scars behind.
> 
> If Angleman really had isolated the healing mechanism, it would be the first meaningful progress they'd made all autumn.
> 
> "So what've you got?" Maggie asked.
> 
> "You remember that gland below its stomach? The one that we thought was part of the digestive system?"
> 
> "What about it?"
> 
> "We were wrong." Angleman handed Maggie the printout he'd been studying earlier. "I've been looking through the summaries of all our previous tests, and I've noticed that the subject heals abdominal injuries, even severe ones, at a faster rate than injuries to the extremities. I've run some statistical analysis -- I think you'll find the numbers pretty startling. The graph in the back--"
> 
> "I see it, yes." Maggie flipped through the pages, skimming over the columns of numbers to get to the graph. "So you think the tissue regeneration is governed by a single organ? Given the scope of the process--"
> 
> "Yes, yes, I know. But we've _looked_ for a complex, multi-organ system, and it's not there, is it? I'm going to take tissue samples from that gland, do a complete chemical analysis." Angleman smiled thinly. "Would you care to help?" The smug way he emphasized the last word made Maggie itch to slap him.
> 
> "Absolutely." She did her best to sound coolly interested. If Angleman was right, then this _was_ a major breakthrough. But it was Angleman's breakthrough, not hers, and her contribution to the research would be minimal -- as Angleman very well knew. If Maggie didn't start producing results of her own, and soon, the Pentagon might begin to question the wisdom of leaving a psychiatrist in charge of the project.
> 
> "Let's get to it, then." Angleman flipped a switch on the wall, and a thick sheet of Plexiglas dropped down in front of the bars with a clang, sealing the cage off from the rest of the room. A moment later, Maggie heard the faint hiss of the gas vents in the ceiling.
> 
> The Hostile's growls turned into high-pitched roars. It rose from its crouch and launched forward and upward, slamming into the plexiglass three feet above the floor. Angleman jumped back, cursing. Maggie stood her ground. She'd seen this behavior before, every time they'd had to gas the Hostile for surgery. She had long ago ceased to be startled by it. Still, it was an impressive display. The barrier actually buckled a little before springing back and bouncing the Hostile half-way across the cage. It hit the floor with a thud and immediately jumped again. This time, Maggie heard bones crunching with the impact.
> 
> Three more leaps, and the gas overcame it. It lay in a heap in the middle of the floor, perfectly still except for the slow rise and fall of its chest, blood trickling from its nostrils in two thick black streams. Angleman flipped another switch, and the ceiling vents' hiss changed in timbre as they began to suck the gas out.
> 
> "One of these days," Angleman muttered, "it'll break its damn neck doing that."
> 
> "It'll probably heal that, too," Maggie said. They already knew from past experiments that the Hostile could recover from a broken spine in 27 minutes, a depressed skull fracture in 43. Minor injuries took even less time to heal. Meanwhile, Michael was a glorified vegetable more than three years after his accident, Lieutenant Finn still hobbled around with a cane... How many of these things were running around in the wild now, free and virtually unkillable, while humans who'd done nothing to deserve it were crippled and killed? The oppressive unfairness of it all made Maggie want to scream.
> 
> "Dr. Walsh?" Angleman sounded slightly impatient, as if he'd tried and failed to attract her attention before. Maggie realized with a start that he had unsealed the cage, and that two lab assistants were waiting by the door with a gurney. "Are you ready?"
> 
> "I'm ready," she said, and moved out of the way to let the lab assistants get into the cage.
> 
> III
> 
> Finn showed up for his first appointment Monday, limping through the door at exactly ten hundred as scheduled. The first words out of his mouth after they settled in the consulting room were, "I think I should apologize. I didn't realize who you were last week. Can't believe I didn't make the connection."
> 
> "Connection?" Maggie had no idea what he was talking about. "Why, are we supposed to know each other from somewhere?"
> 
> "No. But you're M.K. Walsh. I had to read some of your papers on operant conditioning for a senior seminar back at Iowa State. Fascinating stuff."
> 
> "You were a psychology major." Maggie was mildly surprised. She'd assumed, based on Finn's obvious discomfort with the idea of counseling, that he would be ignorant of the subject. "Any particular area of concentration?"
> 
> "Social psych. I was mostly interested in group dynamics. How people interact under different kinds of stress, that sort of thing." Finn smiled, looking slightly self-conscious. "It seemed like a good sort of thing for a future officer to study."
> 
> "I see." Maggie nodded. "So you chose your academic major to advance your military career?"
> 
> "Well... it wasn't as calculated as all that. I really am interested in the subject. But a guy's gotta have his priorities, you know? I knew all along I was going into the Army. I wanted to do well."
> 
> Something about the way he said it, with an almost-imperceptible emphasis on the past tense, made Maggie pause.
> 
> "You do know, don't you," she said after a moment, "that getting counseling is not going to leave some sort of black mark on your record. You've done nothing wrong. This is medical treatment, not a disciplinary measure. It's not going to harm your career prospects any more than surgery or physical therapy would."
> 
> "I know." Finn's voice was perfectly neutral. Maggie had no idea if he felt reassured, or if she'd even been right in her estimation that he needed reassurance. She decided to put the matter aside for the moment and return to her original plan for the session.
> 
> "Since you never got to take part in an AAD in Rwanda, I'd like to do it now. I know it won't really be the same -- the rest of your platoon aren't here, and I doubt we'll finish in a single session, but I think it's still a worthwhile exercise. Are you willing to give it a try?"
> 
> Finn hesitated for only a couple of seconds. "Sure. Might as well."
> 
> "All right, then." Maggie mentally reviewed the list of questions she'd prepared the night before. "Let's start just before the ambush. Where were you?"
> 
> "In the back of a truck, with the rest of my squad." Finn stared up at the ceiling as he spoke, frowning slightly in concentration. "There were two squads in two trucks, and I was in the second one. We'd been out on a night exercise, so everyone was pretty beat. Looking forward to a shower and some sleep. No one was expecting trouble. Hell, I'd been there for months, and there hadn't been any trouble."
> 
> "So this was... morning? Or still night?"
> 
> Finn had to think about that a moment. "Early morning. Don't remember the exact time, but it was still dark."
> 
> "When did you first notice something was wrong?"
> 
> "When I heard the explosion. Which was about half a second before the driver slammed on the brakes." Finn winced and rubbed the back of his neck. "Whiplash city. I thought my head was going to fly off."
> 
> "Describe the explosion," Maggie requested.
> 
> "Loud," Finn said instantly, hesitated as if searching for more adjectives, then shook his head, stymied. "That's basically it. Just a big burst of noise. We found out later the Hutus fired a rocket launcher at the first truck and missed, hit the road in front of it instead. Which was enough to disable it, but at least no one was killed. I heard later the driver had to have a chunk of windshield removed from his eye. That must've hurt like a bi-- a lot. And someone else said--"
> 
> "Let's save later for later, Lieutenant," Maggie interrupted. "I'd like to do this in sequence. You heard an explosion, both trucks stopped-- what then?"
> 
> "People started shooting at us. Automatic fire, pretty heavy, aimed mostly at the first vehicle, 'cause they were the ones out in the open. The truck I was in had stopped in a bend, with some trees on either side of the road, so we had pretty good cover, but we couldn't see to return fire. I yelled at the driver to back us up, and he did, so we got a clearer view. The Hutus were firing from both sides of the road. It was still dark, so we just sighted on their muzzle flashes and fired back as best we could."
> 
> "You were in command, then?" 
> 
> "Of the squad, yeah. Captain Harrison was there, but he was in the other truck."
> 
> Maggie ran through her mental list of questions again. "Was this the first time you'd ever been shot at?"
> 
> "By people who actually wanted to kill me, you mean? Yeah." Finn gave a sudden, unexpected grin. "Hell of an adrenaline rush."
> 
> "Can you describe how it felt?"
> 
> He took his time thinking that one over before shaking his head. "Not really, no. I mean... it felt like being shot at, which really isn't like anything else, so I don't know how to put it in terms that would make sense to somebody who hasn't been there."
> 
> "Were you afraid?"
> 
> "Not... exactly. Not in the 'oh my God, I'm going to die' kind of way. But I didn't know what shape the guys in the other truck were in, whether anyone was dead or hurt, and I also didn't know how many Hutus were out there, and how well-armed they were. I was thinking, if Captain Harrison was down, it would be my job to get everyone's butt out of there. That was kind of a scary thought. But it never came to that."
> 
> "What did it come to?"
> 
> Finn shrugged. "Not much. We kept firing for a while -- felt like a long time, but it was only five minutes or so -- and then we realized no one was shooting back. So I told the guys to stop, and we waited, and nothing happened. After a couple of minutes I figured, what the hell, we can't sit here forever, so I stuck my head out for a look. Nothing. The Hutus had all gone." He sounded almost disappointed. "I think they'd been expecting one truck instead of two, and they kinda blew their wad with the rocket launcher. When that didn't knock us all out, they split."
> 
> "And that was it?" Maggie found herself wishing she could've been there at the real AAD after the ambush, to see what the other men present had to say about it. Had it really been as unremarkable as Finn seemed to think, or was he glossing over the gory details?
> 
> She made him go over the entire sequence two more times, once concentrating on his own physical and emotional reactions to each event, once focusing only on external observations. Finn answered her questions with no great show of either reluctance or enthusiasm, like a student reciting a lesson. To Maggie's ear he sounded just a bit too glib, as if he'd anticipated the questions and rehearsed the answers beforehand. But he also seemed genuinely comfortable with discussing the subject. Whatever was bothering him, it didn't seem to be directly related to the events of the ambush.
> 
> Ten minutes before the hour they were at a good stopping point, so Maggie decided to call the session to a halt. 
> 
> "See you again on Thursday, Lieutenant. We'll pick up where we left off, and you can describe to me, in painstaking detail, how you ended up buried under a house."
> 
> "Great." Finn rolled his eyes. "I can hardly wait." 
> 
> Later that evening, Maggie found herself recounting the conversation as she sat at Michael's side.
> 
> "I can't get a handle on Finn," she admitted. "He sits there, looking so normal it's frightening, answering everything I ask. If I ask the same question five times, he'll answer it five times and not show a trace of impatience. It almost seems rude to think that he's holding something back, or that there's something wrong with him. Back in my Harvard days, we would've pegged him as a serial killer on the theory that nobody else could be that ordinary." Maggie shook her head, smiling ruefully. "It's no wonder nobody spotted a problem until he started showing physical symptoms."
> 
> Michael made a soft, mumbling sound and rolled over onto his side. Maggie froze, holding her breath. Seconds ticked by.
> 
> "Michael?" 
> 
> Nothing. He'd lapsed back into stillness, one arm swinging bonelessly over the edge of the mattress, a trickle of saliva dribbling from the corner of his mouth. Maggie took a tissue from a box on the table, wiped his chin, tucked his arm back onto the bed, and sat down again. She felt drained and weary, not at all in the mood to continue talking. It seemed that after all this time she still hadn't learned, would probably never learn, no matter how often the lesson was repeated. Each movement, each sound from Michael brought with it the momentary hope that maybe this time-- and then the hope would be dashed before she could even voice it to herself.
> 
> Maggie closed her eyes for a moment, composing herself, then opened them again and looked up at the clock above the door. Twenty minutes before visiting hours ended. She felt reluctant to leave early just because she felt upset, but she no longer had any desire to ramble on about Riley Finn and his problems, and no other subjects for conversation sprang to mind. Maggie hovered for another couple of minutes, then finally gave up and left.
> 
> She was just approaching the reception area, digging in her pockets for her gloves, when someone just behind said, "Major Walsh?" Maggie stopped and turned around.
> 
> It was Finn, very non-military in gray fleece sweatpants and faded red T-shirt, with a towel draped around his neck. He looked almost indecently robust, which made his cane appear even more incongruous by contrast.
> 
> "Hello," he said. He looked pleased enough to see her, but also slightly embarrassed. "Didn't expect to see you in this part of the hospital."
> 
> "I'm just going," Maggie said shortly. She had no intention of discussing her personal life with a patient -- or with anyone else, for that matter. "And you, I assume, are here for your physical therapy?"
> 
> "Yep. I've got therapy all over today. Mental, physical..." Finn leaned against the wall and picked at a loose thread at the hem of his T-shirt. "Maybe I should stop by the chapel when I'm done, just to cover all the bases." 
> 
> Maggie smiled, but Finn looked as if he meant it, so she answered seriously. "It might be a good idea, if you're comfortable with it. Just because you're talking things out with me twice a week by appointment doesn't mean you get to keep it bottled up the rest of the time. If you have a good relationship with the chaplain, if there are friends around who'll listen to you -- use them. It's important to have a good support system--"
> 
> "--Outside of therapy. Yeah, I know." Finn didn't sound very enthusiastic at the prospect. "It's just that I feel so... high-maintenance all of a sudden. I'm not used to thinking of myself that way."
> 
> _And would it have killed you to say any of this this morning?_ Maggie just managed to bite back the exasperated question. The boy was nervous about the upcoming PT session, and it was making him talkative. That was all well and good. But she was in no mood to provide impromptu counseling in a hospital corridor.
> 
> "Good luck, Lieutenant. I'll see you in a couple of days." And she walked away quickly, before he had time to say anything else.
> 
> Walking across the parking lot to her car, Maggie decided she couldn't deal with the lab tonight. She called Angleman on the cell phone, told him she had hospital business to take care of, and drove home fully intending to immerse herself in a bubble bath for an hour and go to bed. But by the time she reached her apartment building, the sense of wasted seconds ticking by was too strong, and she spared only a moment's longing glance for the bathtub before sitting down at her desk and turning on the computer.
> 
> She had begun working on a research proposal a couple of days before, something designed to maintain her position on the project in the face of Angleman's possible breakthrough. Much of the background work had actually been done by Angleman, but the central idea was all Maggie's own.
> 
> "There's a surprising degree of tissue and organ compatibility," she typed, "between the subject and other species. Transfusions of whole human blood kept the subject alive during surgery (see Appendix A), and skin grafts taken from it were successfully transplanted onto rats (Appendix B). I believe that if additional test subjects are available, it should be possible to create a human-HST hybrid which, with appropriate conditioning, would fulfill the original scope of the project. As shown in Table 4..."
> 
> She shuffled through the loose papers next to the keyboard, searching for the print-out of Table 4, then swore as the whole unwieldy pile slid off the edge of the desk in a paper avalanche, carrying pens, index cards, and old issues of _Biological Psychiatry_ with it.
> 
> "Oh, hell." Maggie knelt next to her chair to gather up the spillage. "And I had it all in order, too." She picked up a handful of papers and began to sort them, squinting in the inadequate light of the desk lamp. 
> 
> A metallic glint caught her eye, and she reached to pluck a silver-framed photo from the mess. A much younger version of her own face, framed by a shoulder-length hairstyle two decades out of date, smiled at her from behind a scratched sheet of glass. Next to her, Sean grinned from ear to ear, resplendent in a hideous orange polyester shirt and Nehru jacket. He was cradling a two-year-old Michael in one arm and hugging Maggie's waist in the other. Behind them, sunlight reflected off a small pond surrounded by flowering mimosas.
> 
> A more recent, wallet-sized photo was tucked into the lower right-hand corner of the frame: Michael at ten, freckled and self-conscious in his Boy Scouts uniform. Only the vivid blue eyes connected him to the sullen, black-clad teenager he'd eventually grown into.
> 
> Maggie sat on the floor, leaning back against the side of the desk, and cradled the frame in her lap. It bothered her to realize all of a sudden that she couldn't remember where the earlier picture had been taken, or by whom. Had it been a vacation, a weekend outing, or just a random snapshot on a random day? She had still been at Harvard at the time, a couple of years out of medical school, working on her Ph.D.. Were they somewhere in Cambridge? Boston? She had no idea.
> 
> Michael would've interpreted her failure to remember as proof that she didn't care. Michael had always been looking for proof that she didn't care, and always finding it, in everything from Maggie's long working hours to her refusal to provide the latest $300 sneakers on demand. The transfer to Ft. Tyrone had been the final straw for him, though Maggie hadn't realized it at the time.
> 
> He hadn't complained when she'd announced the transfer, retreating instead into sulky, monosyllabic withdrawal that lasted for over a month. In retrospect, Maggie knew she should've recognized it as a danger sign, but she'd been too preoccupied with the logistics of the move and the anticipated challenge of the new project to pay much attention to what she'd perceived as yet another fit of adolescent rebellion.
> 
> The explosion came the following summer, months after they were settled in Tyrone. Michael had finished school and wanted to spend July in Mexico with some old friends from DC. Maggie, who had never liked the friends to begin with, refused to pay for the trip.
> 
> "You want to see Mexico? We'll go together. I have vacation time coming, we can go wherever you like."
> 
> Michael's sneer could've corroded the paint off the walls. "Mexico's not the point, Mom. The point is to spend time with my friends. You know -- people I actually _like_ to hang out with? I'm sure you must have had one or two at _some_ point?"
> 
> That stung, but Maggie refused to be sidetracked. "If that's all you want, let your friends visit here. We have a perfectly good guest room. They can stay for as long as they like."
> 
> "Yeah, right." Michael rolled his eyes. "Stay and do what? This town is a waste of space, Mom. There's nothing for miles in any direction, and every bar and club is overrun by Army morons. I know _you_ don't give a shit how boring it gets, but some of us like to have a life."
> 
> Once again, Maggie refused to rise to the bait. "We're an hour away from Chicago, Michael. You have a car. I'm sure you can find a way to amuse yourself, especially if you have friends along."
> 
> "Easy for you to say! All you do is work, eat and sleep. I could drop dead of boredom in the middle of the living room and you'd never notice. All you care about is the fucking job! You screw up my whole life so you can come here and brainwash people, and now you won't even let me go anywhere. Why don't you just chain me up in the fucking basement?"
> 
> Maggie managed not to break out laughing, but it was difficult. "Don't be so melodramatic, Michael. Your life's just beginning. You'll have plenty of opportunity to screw it up without my help. I'm not keeping you from going anywhere -- feel free to get a job and pay for your own damn trip to Mexico. As for my work, you don't seem to have many complaints when it pays for your computer, your stereo, your car, your--"
> 
> "Oh, not that shit again!" Michael's whole face twisted in disgust. "Every time I try to talk to you, you throw that at me. Just like you did with Dad. God, no wonder he left."
> 
> Maggie had been congratulating herself on her patience, but the sheer staggering unfairness of that accusation triggered her temper. "Your father left," she snapped, "because after fifteen years of trying, he still couldn't convince the art world that he was the next Picasso, and he decided it had to be my fault because I was too busy paying the bills to properly nourish his genius. Oh, and because he discovered that if he went to bars and told the waitresses he was a painter, some of them would offer to take their clothes off for him. Whichever poor fool's nourishing his genius now, I hope she's got money _and_ boobs, if she's planning to hold on to him."
> 
> Michael's eyes widened and his mouth fell open, as if he couldn't quite believe that Maggie had really said that. Maggie couldn't quite believe it herself. Michael had always adored his father. And she had always refrained from openly criticizing Sean after the divorce, or bringing up any sordid details. As her anger faded, she began to wish she'd refrained this time, too. 
> 
> Michael lowered his head and glared at her, blue eyes gone suddenly cold. "Dad was right," he said flatly. "You are a cast-iron bitch." And he stormed out of the apartment, slamming the door behind him. Through the open window, Maggie heard him get into his car and drive away.
> 
> Four hours later, the police had called.
> 
> A sharp pain in her palms snapped Maggie's attention back to the present. She'd clenched her hands so tightly around the corners of the frame that the metal edges had left deep pink gouges in the skin. She forced herself to relax her grip, and laid the frame on the rug next to her, photo side down. _All right, that's enough of that._ She had spent enough sleepless nights since the accident contemplating that final argument and thinking of all the things she might've done and said differently. If she hadn't lost her temper at the end, Michael might not have stormed off the way he did. Of course if she'd dealt with Michael better to begin with, if they'd had a better relationship after the divorce, there might not have been an argument at all. Either way, the accident wouldn't have happened. Maggie had accepted that, accepted that there was nothing she could do now to change the past. But there were things she could accomplish for the future that might make a difference... She took a couple of deep breaths to calm herself, and scooped up more papers from the floor.
> 
> Ten minutes later, order had been restored and Maggie was sitting at the computer again, all thoughts focused on the latest paragraph in the proposal.
> 
> "...until the first successful prototype is built, but in the meantime the techniques outlined above can also be used to enhance the performance of human soldiers in combat conditions, though possible side effects may require..."
> 
> TBC

   [1]: MAILTO:mcq79@hotmail.com



	2. Hazy Shade of Winter -- Chapter 2

Hazy Shade of Winter 2

**Hazy Shade of Winter -- Part 2**  
**by [Mariner][1]**

  
  


> _Notes and disclaimers in Part 1_  
  
IV  
  
Finn arrived fifteen minutes late for his Thursday appointment, pale and bleary-eyed and full of excuses about lack of sleep the night before.  
  
"A couple of my buddies from Rwanda arrived yesterday morning," he explained. "They're stationed here for the next year, so it's like the Three Musketeers together again, you know? We ended up sitting around talking most of the night."  
  
Maggie mentally translated "talking" to "drinking," and turned down the lights before sitting down at her desk.   
  
"That's all right, Lieutenant. I just hope you're up for more talking now. Are you ready to pick up where we left off the last time?"  
  
"Sure," Finn said, sounding not at all sure. Maggie did her best to look patient and encouraging.  
  
"Tell me what happened once the ambush was over."  
  
Finn closed his eyes -- either to aid his concentration or ease his hangover, Maggie wasn't sure -- and rubbed his chin with the back of his hand. There was a small cut on his jaw, and his shirt collar was slightly damp: he must've shaved in a hurry just before coming over. "We all got out to see what the damage was. Turned out we got lucky. The first truck was totally disabled, but the driver was the only one hurt. We got him settled in the other truck with as many of us as would fit, and sent them back to base, while one of the guys radioed for transport for the rest of us. While we were waiting around, we went to check out the houses."   
  
He paused, eyes still closed. Seconds ticked by. Finn showed no inclination to continue.  
  
"What houses?" Maggie prompted.  
  
"Three of them, behind the trees on one side of the road. Little one-room shacks, wooden walls, tin roofs. Pretty rickety to begin with, and all the shooting had messed them up even more. They looked like they'd been abandoned for a while, but Captain Harris said to check them out anyway. There are a lot of abandoned houses in that area, and sometimes people squat in them or just stop for the night on their way to somewhere else.  
  
"So I went up to the nearest one and shone a light through the window, and I thought I saw something moving inside, so I went--"  
  
"Hold on a minute," Maggie interrupted. Finn's speech had gotten faster and faster as he went on, until by the end he was running his words together and barely taking a breath between sentences. "Slow down. What did you see?"  
  
"Nothing, as it turned out. It must've been a trick of the shadows. I was a bit jumpy, so it really wouldn't have taken much to make me see things that weren't there. The point is, I _thought_ there was something there. I called out, and there was a creaking noise, but no one came out. I thought maybe there was someone hurt inside, so I went in to look." Finn fell silent again. This time Maggie just waited without prompting him to continue. He seemed immersed in the memory, and she didn't want to break his concentration.  
  
"The place was a mess," he went on. "Part of the roof had already fallen in, and two of the walls were damaged. There was debris all over the floor, and everything smelled musty. It was pretty obvious there were no people there, but I thought I'd make sure. I went in a little further, and I--" Finn bit his lip for a moment and winced. "I tripped."  
  
"Tripped over what?"  
  
"I don't know. I was pointing the flashlight a bit ahead of me, and I couldn't actually see where my feet were at. There was a vertical beam in the center of the room, supporting the ceiling. I braced my hand against it to catch myself, and it fell over, and then everything came down."  
  
Maggie watched him closely, paying as much attention to the body language as the actual words. Finn kept drawing in on himself as he spoke: hunching his shoulders, folding his arms across his stomach, bracing his left foot against the edge of his chair. When he described the roof's collapse, he squirmed uncomfortably in his seat and rubbed his right hand over his throat in an apparently unconscious gesture. Maggie recalled that his current list of symptoms included chest pains and constrained breathing.  
  
"Do you want to stop for a moment?" she asked.  
  
"Actually, yeah, if you don't mind." For the first time since the conversation started, Finn opened his eyes. "Is there a water cooler around here? I'm parched."  
  
"I'll get you a glass." Maggie stood. Finn started to protest, and to rise, but she waved him back into his chair. "I'm the one with two good legs, Lieutenant. Sit. Chivalry will survive my getting you a drink of water."  
  
By the time she came back, he was composed again, sitting back in the recliner with his legs crossed at the ankles and his arms dangling over the armrests. He looked placid, relaxed, and very, very tall. He took the glass from Maggie with a perfectly steady hand, thanked her with a perfectly steady voice, drank, and looked up expectantly.  
  
"Are you ready to go on?" Maggie asked.  
  
"I'm ready." He gave her the look she'd mentally started to label as "the Hallmark face," all smile and dimples. "It got a bit too vivid there for a moment, but I'm fine now."  
  
And he was, indeed, fine for the rest of the session, showing no signs of reluctance or agitation as he described the two hours he'd spent buried under a pile of wood and tin while his friends worked to clear the wreckage. He listed his injuries as if reciting a grocery list, and when Maggie asked about his time in the hospital, he launched into a series of amusing tales about the practical jokes played by his buddies while he was defenseless in traction. When Maggie finally remembered to check the clock, it was ten minutes past the scheduled end of the session and she was about to be late for a meeting. She interrupted Finn in mid-anecdote, confirmed the date and time of the next appointment, and returned to her office with the frustrating knowledge that she'd been successfully charmed into distraction.  
  
The frustration increased steadily over the next two weeks as Finn continued to be pleasant, chatty, relaxed, and utterly uninformative. He continued to have problems in PT -- in fact, he'd added stomach cramps and vomiting to his ever-growing list of unexplained symptoms -- but remained steadfast in his insistence that there was a physical explanation for it all.  
  
Shortly before Christmas, Finn left for two weeks to visit his family in Iowa. Maggie took advantage of his absence to do extra work at the lab, catch up on her paperwork, and discuss Finn's case with Seville.  
  
"I feel as if we're circling around it," she told him irritably over coffee and sandwiches in the consulting room. "Whatever _it_ is. Sometimes I'll ask a question, and he'll tense a little, and I'll think -- yes, now we're getting there. Then he'll answer with something completely innocuous. I ask something else, and he relaxes. I know I'm missing the target, but I don't know how or why."  
  
"Perhaps you're being too direct," Seville suggested. "You may not know what you're after, but Finn does. You're prodding at the place where his defenses are strongest. Get him to talk about something else, and see if you can approach the problem that way."  
  
"I've been thinking that myself," Maggie admitted. "But the boy has actually studied psychology, and I think he'd recognize an attempt at misdirection. If he decides to resent it, I'll never get anything useful out of him."  
  
"You're not getting anything useful now," Seville pointed out.  
  
Maggie sighed. "There is that..."  
  
She was surprised to discover that she actually missed Finn during his absence. She had never noticed before how few people spoke to her in the course of an ordinary day. She wasn't close to any of her colleagues, either at the hospital or at the lab, and the double duty of her work left no time for a social life, even if she had been inclined to pursue one. And the daily one-sided conversations with Michael were downright exhausting, not to mention depressing. There was a lot to be said for having a polite young man talk amusingly to her for an hour, no matter how professionally frustrating it might be.   
  
It didn't help that between the still-raging flu epidemic and the holidays, life at the base had slowed to a crawl. Everyone who could get leave, did. The unlucky ones who couldn't sulked and did as little work as they could get away with. Meetings were cancelled, seminars postponed. Only the lab went on with its usual schedule; Angleman had no more use for the holidays than Maggie did. Before her sessions with Finn had started, Maggie had resented the loss of two hours out of every week. Now she didn't know what to do with the time she had.  
  
The tissue analysis from the Hostile's abdominal gland finally got finished, and Angleman was highly pleased with the results. He began to look even more smug then usual, and ordered a shipment of rats for testing. Maggie congratulated him, turned in her research proposal, and kept her fingers crossed.  
  
Seville tried to organize a holiday party for the Psychiatry Department, but bad weather and influenzaphobia kept interest to a minimum. Maggie, who didn't go, heard later that less than ten people showed up.  
  
The week between Christmas and New Year, in particular, seemed to drag on longer than the entire year that preceded it. There was snow, then a brief thaw that melted all the accumulation to slush, then a vicious four-day cold snap that turned the streets to solid ice. The heat in Maggie's apartment building went out twice, and the hot water three times. After the second time taking an icy shower in an icy bathroom, Maggie drove out to the nearest Wal-Mart to shop for a space heater. While she was inside, someone broke into her car and made off with the stereo, the cell phone, and the box of tissues she kept on the dashboard. The image of a flu-ridden thief desperately searching the parking lot for a Kleenex was not quite humorous enough to make up for the hassle.  
  
It was a great relief when January first came and went, and life began to resume its normal pace.  
  
Lieutenant Finn came back from Iowa full of health and good cheer, and gave Maggie a box of his grandmother's molasses cookies. His leg was much better, he said, and he hadn't once felt dizzy or faint or anything other than great, not even when he chopped firewood at his grandparents' farm. He thought he was "over it," whatever "it" had been.  
  
This newfound optimism lasted for all of two days. On the third day, Finn arrived for his appointment sporting a dark and swollen bruise along his right cheekbone and a gauze bandage over his eyebrow.  
  
"Hit my head on the weight machine when I keeled over," he explained. "Blood all over the place. Scared the living daylights out of Dr. Lerner. I think he thought I'd put an eye out."  
  
So much for being over it. Maggie decided that this was a good opportunity to discuss something other than Rwanda without making it look as if she was deliberately changing the subject.  
  
"Tell me what happened."  
  
"The usual." Finn sounded tired. "I'm going through my exercises, feeling good, everything's perfect, Dr. Lerner's telling me how well I'm doing -- then suddenly the room starts spinning.  
  
"What were you doing, exactly?"   
  
"Just your basic leg extensions. Nothing extra-strenuous."  
  
"Ever have difficulty during this particular exercise before?"  
  
"Yep. But I've had trouble during every exercise, so that doesn't mean anything."  
  
Over the next several sessions, Maggie got Finn to discuss his exercise regimen, his work, his social life -- almost as non-existent as hers -- and his family. She brought up Rwanda only when an opening arose naturally during the course of conversation, and she watched carefully for any sign of strong resonance between past events and Finn's present situation.  
  
All she got was a wider variety of humorous anecdotes.  
  
"Maybe I'm not the right therapist for you," Maggie suggested once. "Maybe you should talk with the other doctors in the department, find somebody you're more comfortable opening up to--"  
  
Finn was shaking his head before she stopped speaking. "I feel comfortable opening up to _you_. And I'd really rather not have to go over all this crap again with somebody else."  
  
Maggie didn't press the point. She didn't like to admit failure, particularly not on a case that Seville had insisted she take. So she told herself that if Finn didn't want to switch therapists, it would only do more harm to force him, and never brought up the subject again.  
  
  
  
V  
  
The phone was ringing. Hell. Maggie sat up, blinking sleep from her eyes, and groped across the top of the dresser with one hand. The window shades were down, and the only light in the room was the green glow of the alarm clock on the side table. It was eleven-thirty, way past the hour for social phone calls, even if she actually knew anyone who might call her up just to chat. That left junk calls, wrong numbers, and bad news. Maggie pushed back the surge of premature panic -- _please, God, not Michael_ -- as her hand finally closed on the receiver.  
  
"Hello?"  
  
A soft crackle of static was the only response she got. Static and... breathing?  
  
All right, that was one possibility she hadn't considered. Obscene phone call.  
  
"Hello?"  
  
"Major Walsh?"  
  
"Lieutenant Finn?" Of all the people who might've called her, this was the last one Maggie expected. "Are you all right? Is something the matter?"  
  
"No. Yes. I'm sorry." Finn's voice was shaky. Maggie wondered if he was drunk. "Did I wake you up?"  
  
"It's all right," Maggie said automatically. "Is this an emergency?"  
  
More breathing. A sniffle. Then, "I just need... could I talk to you for a bit?"  
  
"We're going to see each other tomorrow morning, Lieutenant."  
  
"I know. It's just... I really need to talk about this with somebody."  
  
Maggie rubbed her eyes, trying to will herself to full alertness. This was not a decision to be made while half awake. Agreeing to counsel a patient outside of scheduled sessions was always awkward. There were risks: if she agreed once, Finn might start expecting it on a regular basis. He might become too dependent, start relying on her instead of friends or family, make unreasonable demands. It would break their routine, set a possibly dangerous precedent, change the dynamic of the relationship... Then again, their current dynamic wasn't accomplishing much, was it? If Finn felt ready to open up, and she made him wait, he might reconsider before morning.  
  
And then there were the horror stories, tales of patients who killed themselves or took a rifle to a rooftop and started firing because a therapist refused to listen at a crucial moment. Maggie was ninety-nine percent sure that Finn was in no danger of going psychotic, but that one percent uncertainty loomed dispropotionately large in the middle of the night, with a guy who'd won three marksmanship medals breathing heavily into the phone. Maggie took a deep breath of her own and decided to take the plunge.  
  
"Go ahead, I'm listening."  
  
"My mom just called." The strain in Finn's voice lessened a little, as if simply having permission to speak was a relief. "My youngest sister's really sick. They took her away in an ambulance."  
  
So much for him opening up. Maggie bit back a frustrated sigh. She would listen; if nothing else, it might make Finn trust her more in future sessions.  
  
"What's wrong with her?"  
  
"Mengoco-- no, that's not right. Hang on, I have it written down." There was another static-filled pause. When Finn finally spoke again, it was slowly and with great care, struggling to tame unfamiliar syllables. "Meningococcal Septicaemia."  
  
"Blood poisoning." Maggie dredged through her med-school memories for the relevant information. "Treatable with antibiotics. Did they catch it early?"  
  
"Yeah. Mom's a nurse. She recognized the symptoms."  
  
"Then I'm sure she'll be all right."  
  
"That's what everyone keeps telling me." Finn didn't sound convinced. "I can't even get leave to go home, because it's not an 'immediate emergency.' But I looked it up. The mortality rate is over fifty percent. One website said eighty."  
  
"Only if it's not caught in time," Maggie said soothingly. "What did your mother have to say?"  
  
"She said it will be okay and not to worry about it. But if it's so okay, why did she call?"  
  
"Does she usually only call when there's something to worry about?"  
  
"N-no."  
  
"If it _was_ really serious, would she lie about it?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Then maybe you should take her at her word?"   
  
"I guess." Finn sighed. "It's just that... I'm used to taking care of her, you know? I want to be there."  
  
What he really wanted, Maggie thought, was for someone to keep reassuring him until he believed it. So much for her good night's sleep.  
  
"What's your sister's name?"  
  
"Stephanie."  
  
"How old is she?"  
  
"Nine."  
  
"Tell me about her."  
  
It took a little over half an hour of metaphorical hand-holding before Finn pronounced himself reassured and allowed Maggie to hang up the phone. She met him in her office that morning in a scolding frame of mind.  
  
"You know you can't do this again, don't you, Lieutenant?"  
  
Finn nodded, looking embarrassed and contrite. "I know. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to keep you up half the night with my stupid problems."  
  
"Keeping me awake is not the issue. And your problems are not stupid. But be honest now -- was this really something you had to discuss with me, and only me? You couldn't have spoken to your friends, or picked up the phone and called your parents?"  
  
"I guess..." Finn met Maggie's disapproving stare with an expression of wide-eyed innocence that she had learned to recognize as a prelude to an evasion. "It's just that I've grown used to talking to you, you know?" He was actually blushing, a faint but noticeable pink tinge from neck to hairline. "You listen well -- interested but not judgemental. And you don't fuss. Everyone around me fusses. It's very tiring."  
  
"Flattery will get you nowhere," Maggie said, and immediately wished she hadn't. She'd meant to sound reproving, but the words came out too glib -- not reproach, but banter. She took a mental step back and started over, more serious this time. "It's good that you're comfortable talking to me. And I'm glad I could help. But therapy is not meant to replace ordinary everyday coping. Of course, some people are in therapy _because_ they can't handle ordinary everyday coping, but I don't think you're one of them."  
  
"I'm not," Finn said quickly. "It won't happen again, I promise."  
  
But three days later, when he called on a Sunday to report that his sister was recovering, but the doctors were worried about possible hearing loss, she didn't have the heart to hang up the phone.  
  
  
  
Angleman divided his lab rats into two groups of twenty, broke their spines in a vise, and injected them with a serum derived from the HST's abdominal gland. The first group died overnight, covered in walnut-sized tumors. The second, dosed at lower levels, lived an average of three days, and half of the longer-lived rats healed their injuries completely before expiring from massive organ failure.  
  
"I knew it would work," Angleman said cheerfully as he filled out the request forms for another batch. "Just a matter of getting the dosage right."  
  
Maggie went home and drafted a letter politely inquiring about the status of her project proposal.  
  
Finn's sister did not die, go deaf, or suffer any other permanent harm from her illness. The news had a visible improving effect on him, and he made it through three successful PT sessions before collapsing with chest pains mid-way through the fourth.   
  
"I don't get it," he complained. "I was doing so well there for a while. Dr. Lerner was getting all excited just watching me do hamstring curls. And then -- wham! -- down I go. Again."  
  
A similar remark from a previous session surfaced in Maggie's memory. "Wasn't there at least one other time when you became ill shortly after Dr. Lerner mentioned how well you were doing?"  
  
"Yeah." Finn looked thoughtful. "A couple of times, actually."  
  
"Is that _always_ when it happens?"  
  
"I'm not sure." He stared off into the distance for a few seconds, considering the question. "I haven't really been keeping track."  
  
"Try keeping track from now on. If there's a connection, we need to deal with it."  
  
"But why would there be? Why would I get worse every time I think I might get better? I _want_ to get better."  
  
Maggie was beginning to have doubts on the subject, but they were too vague for immediate discussion. "Maybe that's the problem. Maybe you get overanxious, or push yourself too hard. Or maybe there's no connection at all. But it's worth investigating."  
  
That single bit of progress, however small and illusory it might be, was the only positive gleam in Maggie's winter. Everything else seemed frozen in a cold, gray limbo. Her research proposal appeared to sink without a trace into the vast sea of Pentagon bureaucracy, leaving Maggie to function as little more than Angleman's lab assistant. She threw herself into her work at the hospital, attending several seminars, taking over a weekly stress-reduction workshop from a colleague on maternity leave, and giving a talk on hypnotherapy to a group of civilian psychologists from Chicago. But the work was neither meaningful nor challenging, and she felt as if she was spinning her wheels, filling up the days with empty chores.  
  
Endless treks through wind and slush finally took their toll, and she came down with a mild respiratory infection that had her wheezing throughout the day and coughing herself awake at night. It never got bad enough to justify taking time off, but it wouldn't go away, either. In the meantime, Michael's doctors requested that she stop her visits until she was fully recovered. Maggie understood the reasoning -- with Michael's weakened immune system, even a mild infection could easily turn deadly -- but it did nothing to improve her state of mind.  
  
She acquired a habit of eating dinner at a restaurant near the base, not because she particularly liked the food or enjoyed eating out, but because her apartment felt a little emptier and darker with every passing day. She couldn't summon the energy to cook just for herself, and eating take-out in front of the TV had lost its appeal. So every night Maggie lingered just a little later at the Toucan Bar & Grill, until one Friday night she found herself still in her booth at nine in the evening, ordering a second pot of tea and a slice of cheesecake instead of getting up and going home.  
  
The Toucan was decorated in a rain forest motif, with murals of vivid green foliage on the walls and brightly colored birds and butterflies stenciled on the place mats. The square columns that separated the booths were painted to look like tree trunks, with an occasional poison-dart frog to provide a spot of color. Maggie privately questioned the wisdom of using pictures of poisonous amphibians to decorate a place that served food, but it certainly didn't seem to be driving customers away. The place was popular with soldiers, mainly for its large beer selection and the three pool tables at the back of the bar, and Fridays were always lively, even at a time of year when few people cared to venture outside.  
  
Maggie stirred her tea and swallowed a small forkful of cheesecake, which was far too sweet and had a soggy crust. She wasn't even hungry, really. It was foolish to sit and procrastinate this way. She really should--  
  
"Yo, Riley, that steak is dead already, you don't have to keep stabbing it with your fork."  
  
The voice, pitched to be heard over the surrounding din, made Maggie jump a little. She looked over to her left into the adjoining booth, separated from hers by a clear plastic divider and two tree-trunk columns. There were two young men sitting on the bench facing her, and neither one of them was Lieutenant Finn. Both wore civilian clothes, but their looks and bearing clearly marked them as Army. The one closer to Maggie was tall, black, with a shaved head and a broad grin that was just a bit too forcefully charming. The other had the same apple-pie looks as Finn, with a square-jawed, good-natured face and football player build.  
  
"Stop nagging, Forrest." Definitely Finn's voice. He was sitting on the other side of the booth, blocked from Maggie's view by a column. She found herself pressing back in her seat, afraid that he might lean forward and see her. Not that this was anything to be afraid of, rationally. But sitting alone in a noisy restaurant on a Friday night, eating a dessert she didn't even like suddenly seemed more pathetic than ever before. And it wouldn't do for a doctor to appear pathetic in front of a patient, would it? Erosion of confidence and all that.  
  
"I'm not nagging." The tall black guy -- Forrest, presumably -- grabbed a French fry from a basket in the middle of the table, popped it into his mouth, and blithely continued talking with his mouth full. "I'm stating an incowhawha--" Pause, swallow. "--An incontrovertible fact. That steak is dead. It's kicked the bucket, shuffled off this mortal coil, rang down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. It is an ex-cow! Now either honor its memory by chowing down on the remains, or pass it on to somebody who will."  
  
"Help yourself." Finn's hand came into view, pushing a plate of barely touched T-bone and baked potato toward Forrest. "I'm not hungry."  
  
"Oh, I didn't mean me. I meant the bottomless pit here." Forrest pointed his thumb toward his neighbor, who had just polished off the last bit of one cheeseburger and was picking the second one off his plate.  
  
"I'm fine," the bottomless pit said. Forrest rolled his eyes.  
  
"Well, if you're _both_ going to be like that..." He pulled the plate toward him, but made no move to pick up his fork. He was still looking across the table at Finn, and Maggie could clearly see the genuine concern beneath the comedy. She wondered if Finn was seeing it too. "You wanna order something else?"  
  
"Nah."  
  
"How about a game of pool, then?"  
  
"Maybe later."  
  
"You're a wuss. Tell him he's a wuss, Graham."  
  
"You're a wuss," the bottomless pit named Graham mumbled between bites of cheeseburger. Forrest clapped him on the back.  
  
"See? Look at you. The whole reason we dragged our asses into the cold tonight was to get you to loosen up and have a little fun. Had I known--"  
  
"Really? And here I thought we were going out to celebrate because Graham got into the Green to Gold program."  
  
"That too." Forrest picked up his beer mug and held it out to Graham. "Good job, Gray. About time you stopped all that enlisted crap and became an officer like all the real men."  
  
"Fuck you," Graham said mildly, and clinked his mug against Forrest's.  
  
"The point is," Forrest continued, "we're supposed to be celebrating. All of us. Having fun. Had I known you were going to sit here all night looking like you just shot Old Yeller, I wouldn't have bothered to invite you."  
  
"I'm sorry I'm not sufficiently entertaining for you." Finn's voice held annoyance and affection in equal measure. Maggie didn't need to see his face to clearly visualize his lifted eyebrows and the wry twist of his mouth. "Next time you want company, feel free to invite somebody else."  
  
"I like my company just fine, thanks." Forrest glared, snatched up his silverware, and made a big production out of cutting and eating several pieces of Finn's steak. For a while, none of the men spoke. Maggie found herself inexplicably focused on Finn's hand, still the only part of him that was visible to her. He was turning a plastic straw over and over between his fingers, twisting it into loops then smoothing it out again. She could see the dark blue cuff of his sweater sleeve, turned back to just above the wrist, and a bit of dried blood on his thumbnail where he'd bitten it to the quick. Maggie tried to remember if she'd ever actually seen him bite his nails, and decided that she hadn't.  
  
After a minute or so, Forrest resumed the conversation. "So Ry, what's up with that lady shrink of yours? She helping?"  
  
Riley's hand clenched into a fist for a moment, then relaxed again. "Too early to say."  
  
"How long does it take, man? You've been seeing her, what, two months? I've had girlfriends that didn't last that long."  
  
"Most of your girlfriends don't last two days."  
  
"Don't change the subject. You're not getting anywhere, Ry. Maybe you should switch shrinks."  
  
"I like the one I've got."  
  
"Yeah? What's so great about her, if she's not helping? Is she hot or something?"  
  
Maggie sat frozen in place, tea and dessert forgotten. The last thing she'd expected when she began her unplanned eavesdropping was to find herself the subject of the debate. She had no business listening to this -- not that she had any business listening to any of it -- but leaving without asking for the bill might attract attention to herself, and then Finn would know she was there. Maggie looked around desperately, searching for sight of her waitress. At the same time, she tried to tune out the conversation still going on next to her, but the voices suddenly seemed unnaturally loud and focused, refusing to blend into the ambient noise.  
  
"You're a pig, Forrest."  
  
"And you're not answering my question. Is she hot?"  
  
"Lay off him, Forrest," Graham muttered. But Forrest, apparently, was not to be dissuaded.  
  
"Hey, all I did was ask a simple question. This isn't rocket science -- a woman is hot, or she's not. If you've seen her once, you must know. No need to get embarrassed about it."  
  
"I'm not embarrassed."  
  
"Oh, please. You're blushing like a virgin bride."  
  
Maggie finally caught the waitress' eye. She made a little writing motion in the air, got a nod in return, and began to dig through her purse for her wallet.  
  
"Come off it, Forrest. She's my _therapist_."  
  
"And that makes her ugly by default?"  
  
"Of course not. Can we change the subject, please?"  
  
"Not when you're blushing so prettily. My curiosity's piqued now."  
  
"That's your problem."  
  
"It'll be your problem too, until you answer the question."  
  
The waitress slapped the bill down on Maggie's table, said "I'll be right back for that, Ma'am," and moved on before Maggie could hand her the money. Damn.  
  
"You're not going to let it drop, are you?"  
  
"Hell, no. This is way too entertaining. Come one, now, it's a yes or no question. You can do it. Is. She. Hot?"  
  
There was a pause. Finn let the straw drop and tapped his hand on the table, while his friends watched him expectantly.   
  
"Yeah," he muttered finally. "She's kinda hot."  
  
Maggie tossed two crumpled twenties on the table, and fled without waiting for her change.  
  
  
VI  
  
It really wasn't worth getting upset about. Maggie kept telling herself that, over and over, as she drove home. Yes, it had been awkward to suddenly find herself eavesdropping on a patient's private life, but in the end, what difference did it really make? Finn was showing mild symptoms of depression -- she knew that already. He had friends who were concerned about him -- she knew that, too. He found her attractive -- that was new, and somewhat embarrassing, but totally irrelevant to his case. The boy was twenty-three years old. He probably found anything female under the age of ninety attractive.  
  
The irrelevancy of the information, however, did nothing to take Maggie's mind off it. Throughout the drive, she kept replaying her conversations with Finn over and over in her mind, trying to remember his posture, gestures, facial expressions. Suddenly, his charming smiles and funny stories, which she had interpreted as attempts at evasion, began to appear in a new light. Which was ridiculous. Whatever Finn might think of Maggie's personal appearance, the notion that he would flirt with her was laughable. The situation was so wildly inappropriate, and Finn obviously had so many other things on his mind, that the thought would never occur to him.   
  
He seldom looked directly at her during their sessions. He'd stare at the ceiling, or the wall behind her, or the toes of his boots, sometimes ducking his head or turning away when she asked an uncomfortable question. But when he did meet her eyes, he always looked intensely focused and sincere, as if the question she was asking or the answer he was giving was the most important thing in his life. Was this his normal manner? Was he like this with his superior officers, his physician, his family, his subordinates? Maybe she could discreetly ask around...  
  
Or maybe she could stop dithering. Maggie scowled in disgust at her own stupidity as she stomped up the stairs to her apartment. What was wrong with her, anyway? Why this sudden fit of adolescent jitters over a stray remark in a diner? Had it been so long since a good-looking man admitted to thinking of her as "hot," that the event should come as a shocking revelation?  
  
Well, yes, it had, if she was going to be truthful about it. In the first year following her divorce, Maggie had gone out on a couple of dull and awkward dates arranged by well-meaning friends who thought she needed to get out more. The move to Tyrone had put the well-meaning friends at a safe distance, the doubled workload ate up all her spare time, and Maggie's social life had died a quiet, painless death. It had been years since she had interacted with a man socially.  
  
_You're not interacting with Finn socially, either,_ she reminded herself sternly as she hung up her coat and sat down to remove her snow boots. Really, even if she could socialize with him, she wouldn't want to. They had nothing in common. He was half her age. The idea was laughable. Maggie sat and forced herself to laugh at it, but the sound rang hollow and fake in the emptiness of her living room.  
  
She was tired, that was all. Tired and stressed and losing her sense of perspective. A little relaxation would put her right again. Maggie went into the bathroom and turned on the water in the tub, then went into the bedroom to undress while the bath filled.  
  
She lit a rose-scented candle on the shelf above the sink, sprinkled a handful of lavender bath salts into the tub, and climbed in, sinking down until the water lapped at her shoulders. It felt soothing and comfortable. Normally she would just lean back, close her eyes and soak, drowsy and relaxed, until the water cooled. But tonight relaxation eluded her. Instead, Maggie found herself lifting one leg out of the water and contemplating the shape of her calf with a critical eye. It was a good calf, not at all flabby, despite being almost forty-seven years old. Maggie had been quite athletic in her youth -- tennis in high school and college, numerous hiking and skiing vacations during her marriage -- and while her recent life left no room for anything more than the occasional half-hour on an exercise bike, she was still in fairly good shape.   
  
_In other words, I look great for a middle-aged scientist._ Maggie sighed and dropped her leg back down into the bath with a splash. Whom was she kidding? She had seen the young women at the Toucan's bar, shooting pool and flirting with the soldiers. She had no illusions about how she'd fare in comparison. Finn's reluctant "she's kinda hot" was most likely a handy euphemism for "she's female, breathing, and not visibly disfigured." The fact that she'd attached any importance to the statement only went to show that her well-meaning friends had been right -- she did need to get out more.  
  
Maggie closed her eyes and rested her head on the rim of the tub. Enough was enough. She was going to sit there and soak until she relaxed or the bathwater froze over, whichever came first.  
  
  
  
Circumstances seemed to conspire against her. She had to reschedule her next appointment with Finn from ten hundred to eighteen hundred hours to make room for a seminar on drug interactions that Seville had ordered for everyone on the staff. Finn must've been off-duty that evening, because he arrived at the consulting room wearing jeans and a bulky turtleneck sweater. This was the first time Maggie ever truly appreciated, on more than just an intellectual level, the psychological importance of uniforms. They created a comfortable wall of professionalism, a mental barrier that made it easy to keep an emotional distance. Without it, Lieutenant Riley Douglas Finn stopped being an interesting case study in PTSD, and became an attractive young man with very long legs and a distracting smile.  
  
It didn't help that Finn himself seemed to take his civilian attire as an excuse to sit with one leg draped over the recliner's arm in a posture that Maggie was sure violated a regulation somewhere. He was talking earnestly about his fears that his current troubles might damage his chances of qualifying for Special Forces in the future. Maggie tried to pay attention, and to look him in the face as she listened, but both her thoughts and her gaze kept wandering downwards.  
  
"Lieutenant," she finally blurted out, "will you _please_ sit up straight?"  
  
"Ma'am." Finn jolted upright in his seat, planting both feet on the floor. "Sorry."  
  
"It's all right." Maggie massaged her forehead with one hand. Not for the first time since that night at the Toucan, she considered the advisability of referring Finn to another psychiatrist. But the thought faded quickly, just as it had all the other times, and she pulled herself together with an effort. "I want you to be comfortable, of course. But... this is not a social visit, and I don't think we should behave as if it was one, do you?"  
  
"N-no," Finn said hesitantly, watching her with a puzzled expression. Maggie couldn't begin to imagine what he must be thinking of her outburst. The urge to try and cover with some contrived explanation was strong, but she resisted it. Don't draw attention. Just move on.  
  
She took a moment to rearrange the papers on her desk, then gave Finn a polite, neutral smile. "So, you were saying?.."  
  
  
  
VII  
  
The phone was ringing. Damn. Maggie clambered out of the shower, dripping water and shampoo, and sprinted for the living room.   
  
"Hello?"  
  
"Dr. Walsh?" Angleman's voice. What the hell was he doing at the lab on a Sunday morning? "You need to come out here as soon as possible. We've got another one."  
  
"Another what?" Maggie returned to the bathroom, using one shoulder to hold the phone against her ear while she grabbed a towel. "Another HST?"  
  
"Yes. They're unloading it right now. And they want your signature on the delivery forms." There was a faint but unmistakable tone of resentment in Angleman's voice. Maggie couldn't resist feeling just a touch of smugness. For all his recent attention-grabbing work, Angleman was still second in command on the project.  
  
"I'll be there in half an hour." She hung up the phone, and hurried to get dressed.  
  
  
  
The scene at the lab was eerily familiar. An unmarked truck parked at the front entrance, flanked by a pair of black sedans with tinted windows. Serious-looking men in suits poring over her identification and presenting endless forms to be signed in triplicate. Angleman hovering in the background, looking nervous and excited at the same time. The new HST sprawled, drugged and insensible, on the floor of a huge steel cage with bars thick as Maggie's wrist.  
  
The HST looked nothing like the first one. This one was nearly eight feet tall, cadaverously thin, with skin the color of Concord grapes and a face that was all ridges and spikes.  
  
"Where did it come from?" Maggie asked the man who seemed to be in charge of the delivery.   
  
He stared at her with pale, impassive eyes that never seemed to blink. "If it's not listed on the forms, then you're not cleared to know, Major. Which reminds me..." He handed her a thick manila envelope, stamped "Classified" in impressive red letters on both sides. "I was told to give you this separately from the other forms. Sign for it here, please."  
  
The lab only had one holding cell, and they couldn't very well lock both creatures in together, so Maggie had the men wheel the cage into one of the unused storage rooms. Perhaps when the construction crew came in, they could redo several rooms at once, in case more surprises arrived. The operating theater would need adjustments too. None of the current tables were big enough to hold this one. They'd need to have one custom made...  
  
She wondered if it was possible that both HST's belonged to the same species. It seemed unlikely: they looked far too dissimilar. But the idea of two previously unknown humanoid species being discovered within a year of each other seemed even more improbable. Maggie had always done her best to refrain from wild speculations about her project, but it was becoming more and more difficult.  
  
"Do you think they could be extraterrestrial?" she suggested to Angleman as soon as they were alone in the lab again. Angleman's lack of surprise at the question suggested that he'd been considering the possibility also.  
  
"I suppose they could be, but... they can breathe our air, eat our food, drink our water. They respond more or less predictably to our drugs. Hell, they can take blood transfusions from us -- or at least the first one can. I suppose we'll find out about this one soon enough. Now, I can believe in parallel evolution to some degree, but this seems a little much."  
  
"I know." Maggie sighed. "But then, where the hell is the Army digging these things up?"  
  
"Damned if I know." Angleman shrugged. "Personally, I'm willing to just work with what they give me for the time being. Look what I've got here." He lifted the top of a wire cage, and scooped out a wriggling white rat with a blue tag on its ear. "Perfectly healed."  
  
Maggie did her best to look enthusiastic. "I guess that means you finally have the dosage right."  
  
"Yes, and that's not all." Angleman turned the rat over to expose its belly. "This one had an old scar across its abdomen, right here." He indicated the place with his finger. "Do you see a scar now?"  
  
"No." Maggie leaned in for a closer look. The rat squealed and pedaled its hind paws in the air. "Are you sure you've got the right one?"  
  
"Positive. I tagged it a different color from the others, because I thought this might happen. Do you realize what this means?" Angleman's normally uninflected voice practically squeaked with excitement. He sounded like the rat, Maggie thought pettily. "The serum doesn't just heal new injuries -- it reverses existing damage. Just think about that for a moment. Burn victims, frostbite victims... Maybe it goes beyond surface damage. People who were crippled in accidents, maybe even lost limbs..."  
  
Maggie stared at the squirming rodent in Angleman's hand and felt her mouth go dry as she considered the possibilities. She had to take several slow, steadying breaths before she could trust herself to speak in an appropriately detached tone. "What about brain damage? Coma, vegetative state..."  
  
"Who knows?" Angleman dropped the rat back into the cage and latched the lid. His brief burst of enthusiasm appeared to have passed, and he was back to his usual detached self. "It's all speculation at this point, anyway. For all we know, erasing scars on rats is the best we'll ever do. And if there's more -- you know as well as I do how long it takes to get a new drug approved. And that's assuming we can ever get this declassified. If we're lucky, the FDA will let us test on human subjects sometime before we both drop dead of old age."  
  
"Yes, of course," Maggie muttered automatically. She didn't give a damn about FDA approval, and she suspected that the men who ran the lab didn't either. If _they_ decided that human testing was warranted, then it would be done. And if she had a specific subject to suggest... Maggie pushed the thought away with an effort. It was, as Angleman said, all speculation. She had to remain detached if she was going to keep functioning at all. Maggie left Angleman to play with his rats, and retreated to her office.  
  
Alone at her desk, she opened the classified envelope she'd received earlier, and extracted the thick sheaf of papers inside. The top sheet informed her, in terse militarese, that her research proposal had been submitted for budget approval. The evaluation would begin as soon as she filled out the attached expense estimates, personnel requests, and procedural forms. In triplicate. Maggie reached for her pen, wondering wistfully if the final budget would allow for a secretary with high security clearance.  
  
Five hours later, her eyes blurry and her writing hand cramping, she was grateful to be interrupted by a knock on her door.  
  
"What is it?"  
  
"Dr. Walsh?" It was Henry, the security guard from the front desk, peering at her with polite concern. "Just wanted to let you know, it's snowing pretty hard out there. They're issuing travel advisories on the radio. You might want to leave now, if you're going to get home at all."  
  
"Oh?" Maggie had been sitting with her back to the window. Now she swiveled her chair around and looked outside. It was, indeed, snowing, fat white flakes swirling in violent gusts of wind that shook the trees in the parking lot. It looked unpleasant, but no more so than almost any other day in the past two months. And Maggie had long since given up paying attention to travel advisories. "Thank you, Henry. I'll just finish up here and go."  
  
It was another two hours before she finally left the office, having gone through slightly more than half of her required paperwork. By then, the snow in the lot was ankle-deep, with knee-high drifts piling up on the windward side. It was freezing, too. Maggie shivered violently as she scraped her car windows. By the time she got inside, her fingers and toes had gone numb. It took her several tries to get the key into the ignition. The heater spewed cold air the first time she turned it on, and she waited five minutes for the engine to warm up before trying again.   
  
Even with the brights on, she could barely see the road in front of her as she steered the car out of the lot. The snow was a curtain of solid white. Maggie thought about the death-trap curves of Route 17 and cursed herself for not having left sooner.  
  
She navigated the road more by memory than by sight, crawling through each turn, gritting her teeth every time she dared take her eyes off the road long enough to check the odometer. Fifteen miles. It was fifteen goddamn miles to town. How long could it take? She'd never bothered to replace her stolen car stereo, so there was no clock to check the time, and she wasn't about to take a hand off the steering wheel just so she could push back her coat sleeve to check her watch. It felt as if she'd been driving for hours.  
  
Seven miles... eight... she was more than halfway there. The streets would be clearer once she got into town. There would be snowplows and other cars. It wouldn't be so bad then. Of course at the rate she was going, it would be spring by the time she got there... Wasn't there another sharp turn coming up? Yes, there it was, thank God she'd driven this road so many times...  
  
A quarter of the way through the turn, Maggie realized she was steering too wide. She tried to adjust and felt the rear wheels skid sharply to the left as the car began to spin. Reflex kicked in before intellect. Even as her memory flashed through the usual driving school advice -- _don't brake, steer into the skid_ -- Maggie's foot was slamming on the brake pedal as her hands spun the wheel in the wrong direction. There was a jolt, followed by a grinding noise, as the car slid sideways off the road and down the sloping ground, to be stopped only by the impact of passenger side against tree.  
  
For a few moments, all Maggie could do was sit there and shake. Eventually the adrenaline rush subsided, to be replaced by the realization that she was not injured, only dazed and breathless. And stuck. Three attempts to make the car move either forward or backwards produced only more grinding noises. Maggie unbuckled her seatbelt, flicked off the windshield wipers, and sat back to consider her options.   
  
At first glance, there seemed to be only one: sit and wait. This stretch of road was not especially well-traveled -- she had seen only one other car during her trip -- but this close to town, surely some one would come by eventually. Hopefully before she froze to death.  
  
The passenger side window was shattered, the door buckled away from the frame. Only a couple of minutes had passed since the collision, but already a thin coating of snow had accumulated on the empty seat. Even with the heater going full-blast, the air in the car was cooling rapidly. Maggie briefly contemplated her own stupidity in not getting a new cell phone, decided this was not the time to worry about it, and settled down to wait for rescue.  
  
Fifteen minutes later, no rescue had arrived, the car was beginning to feel like an icebox, and waiting no longer seemed like such a good option. Maggie shivered and held her hands in front of the heater's vent, rubbing her palms together. The cashmere-lined leather driving gloves she'd purchased back in November were not designed for prolonged exposure to the elements. Neither were her boots, for that matter. She couldn't stay here. The shivering was a sign that hypothermia was already setting in. Since help wasn't coming, she'd just have to go and find it herself.  
  
Maggie frowned as she tried to concentrate. There was a service station somewhere up ahead, wasn't there? It was hard to think, she felt so groggy and unfocused, but she was sure it was just past this turn somewhere, half a mile, maybe less. She could walk half a mile, even in this weather. She had a heavy coat on, and the movement would help warm her up. In any case, it would be better than just sitting there waiting to freeze. Feeling determined now, Maggie retrieved her handbag from under the seat, and climbed out of the car.  
  
The wind nearly knocked her off her feet. In the car she'd been sheltered from the worst of it, but now it seemed to be going after her with personal spite. Maggie raised her collar and held it closed in front of her face with one hand. This made breathing possible, if not pleasant. For a moment, her resolve wavered. Then she reminded herself of the broken window and the useless heater, and began climbing toward the road.  
  
By the time she reached the shoulder, she had snow down her collar and in her boots, and her eyes threatened to freeze shut every time she blinked. She rubbed them with the back of her hand and kept walking, following the curve of the road as closely as she could, given the bad visibility and the uncertain footing. The wind continued its attack, but she must've gotten acclimated to it, because she no longer felt its coldness, only its force. Fortunately, it was at her back as she walked, so her face was shielded from it. Maggie tucked her chin down deeper into her collar and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.  
  
She thought she did pretty well at first, but the shivering kept getting worse, and her legs kept getting clumsier. With every step it became a little harder to make her feet go where she wanted to put them. Maggie stopped, swaying, and looked back to see how far she'd come.  
  
She couldn't tell. It all looked the same -- road, snow, trees. How far was she from the car? Should she return or press forward? Maggie walked a few paces, stopped, reversed direction, walked again, stopped... It was no use. She couldn't decide which direction was better. She couldn't even remember which direction was which. Still, she couldn't just stand there. She needed to move, to go somewhere...  
  
She took a random step, stumbled, and came down on all fours in the snow. When she tried to rise, her legs buckled. She made it up on the third try and found that she once again couldn't remember what direction she'd been walking in. The effort of figuring it out was just too much. All she could was stand there, shaking, while the wind resumed its attempts to knock her down.  
  
She didn't even notice the approaching headlights until the car was practically on top of her. Even then, she couldn't bring herself to move. There was a squeal of brakes and a spray of snow as the car stopped just a few feet away from her. A moment later, the driver's door swung open.  
  
"Hello?" a vaguely familiar voice called out, straining to be heard above the wind. "Ma'am? Can I give you a ha-- Major Walsh?"  
  
A tall, bulky figure clambered out of the car and limped toward her through the swirling snow. Maggie blinked and had to rub the frost from her eyes again. She couldn't see his face, not with the light behind him, but the voice and the limp tipped her off.  
  
"Lieutenant Finn?"   
  
"What are you doing out here?" He put one hand on her shoulder, and she clutched at his sleeve, grateful for the support. "Are you injured?"  
  
"No. I don't think... I mean... I skidded off the road."  
  
"Come on, let's get you out of the cold." Finn guided her toward the car, which proved, upon closer inspection, to be an Army Jeep. He helped her into the passenger seat, then ran around to the other side and climbed in himself. "How long have you been out here?"  
  
"I don't know." Maggie couldn't stop shivering. "A while..."  
  
"You could've been killed." Finn turned up the heater, adjusted the vents to blow in Maggie's direction, and wriggled out of his coat. "The wind chill is, like, minus thirty or something. Here, take this." He draped the coat over her like a blanket. "I'm going to drive you to the hospital."  
  
"No!" The thought of windowless beige rooms, fluorescent lights and intrusive nurses was unbearable. Maggie wanted to be in her home, in her own bed, unbothered by the kindness of strangers. "Home."  
  
Finn shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "You're hypothermic. I really think you should--"  
  
"Home," Maggie insisted. "Please..."  
  
He sighed. "Where do you live?"  
  
  
  
  
By the time they arrived at her apartment building, Maggie's shivers had subsided a bit, and the snow had melted from her hair and clothes. Finn double-parked right in front of the entrance, gently took Maggie's purse from her hands, and dug out the keys.  
  
"I'm coming in with you," he said in a tone that didn't allow for the possibility of disagreement. "You shouldn't be left alone until you've warmed up."  
  
Maggie tried to hand him his coat back as he got out of the Jeep, but he waved her off.  
  
"It's only for a minute. I'll be fine." He ran to the front door and unlocked it, propped it open, then helped Maggie out of the car and into the building. When she stumbled on the steps -- it was difficult to move gracefully while bundled up in two thick coats -- he caught her with one arm around her middle, and slung her inside as if she weighed no more than an ounce. Some small, still unfrozen part of Maggie's mind wanted to protest all this chivalrous manhandling, but by the time she managed to formulate a coherent complaint he had already unlocked the door to her apartment and was asking where the bedroom was.  
  
Before she knew it, she was sitting in bed, dressed in her warmest sweats and three pairs of socks, wrapped in a comforter, and clutching an electric heating pad to her chest. She could hear Finn puttering in her kitchen: rattling dishes, opening the refrigerator, turning on the microwave. A few seconds later he came into the room, carrying her largest coffee mug.  
  
"Warm milk and honey," he announced, sitting down at the edge of the bed. "My grandmother swears by it. Can you hold it steady, or do you need me to help?"  
  
"I can manage." Maggie found that she could stop shivering if she really concentrated. She took the mug from Finn and sipped the milk, wrinkling her nose at the sweetness. He must've used as much honey as milk. "I'm sorry to be so much trouble. I promise, I'm not usually this incompetent at taking care of myself."  
  
"Oh, I know that." Finn smiled tolerantly. "You were hypothermic; it messes with your head. Don't worry about it." He gestured toward the mug, and Maggie obediently took another sip. "We should probably call AAA about your car, but that can wait. They're not going to send anyone out into this mess. What were you doing out there in the middle of nowhere, anyway?"  
  
This was not a question Maggie wanted to deal with. It was hard enough carrying on a coherent conversation in her current semi-thawed state, even without having to come up with convincing lies. "And what were _you_ doing there? Not that I'm not glad you came along..."   
  
Much to her relief, Finn either missed the obvious change of subject or decided not to pursue it. "I was coming back from Chicago. I was supposed to meet somebody at O'Hare, but her flight got cancelled. Apparently this storm hit Minnesota before it hit here."  
  
"Ah." Maggie nodded, drank more milk, and firmly told herself that she wasn't going to ask personal questions -- a resolution that lasted all of ten seconds. "Girlfriend coming in for a visit?"  
  
"Yes, but not mine. A friend's girlfriend. He couldn't get off-duty to go meet her, so I said sure, buddy, I'll pick her up, no problem. What's a little driving between friends? That'll teach me to open my big mouth." He smiled again. "But it all works out, because I could be there to help you, and now Graham will have to drive to O'Hare eventually anyway, but he'll still owe me a favor."  
  
"That's nice..." Maggie yawned. Now that the chills had subsided, she was beginning to feel drowsy and lethargic. Keeping her eyes open was becoming more and more of a chore.  
  
"Why don't you get some rest?" Finn took the empty mug from her hands and stood up. "I'll be in the living room if you need anything."  
  
She was asleep before he made it to the door.  
  
  
**TBC**

   [1]: MAILTO:mcq79@hotmail.com



	3. Hazy Shade of Winter -- Chapter 3

Hazy Shade of Winter 3

**Hazy Shade of Winter -- Part 3**  
**by [Mariner][1]**

  
  


> _Notes and disclaimers in Part 1_  
  
VIII  
  
She woke up early the next morning, feeling hot and thirsty. A quick glance out the window verified that it was still snowing as hard as the night before, if not harder. The street was an unbroken stretch of white, even the parked cars buried completely under snowdrifts. It was still dark out, and Maggie considered staying in bed for another couple of hours, but the room was uncomfortably stuffy and she needed a glass of water a lot more than she needed extra sleep. Maggie climbed out from under the covers, eased the bedroom door open a few inches, and peered out into the living room.  
  
Riley Finn was asleep on her sofa, curled up on his side, arms and legs tucked in at awkward angles to fit into a space much too small for him. He must've sat up for some time after she'd gone to bed. The reading lamp was on, and there was an empty water glass on the coffee table next to her battered old copy of _Passions of the Mind_. Finn stirred slightly as Maggie tiptoed past him on the way to the kitchen, but did not wake.  
  
She poured herself some water, drank it, then rinsed out the glass and put it back in the cabinet. A quick look in the refrigerator did not reveal anything she particularly wanted to eat, so she clicked off the light and headed back to the bedroom.  
  
She was halfway across the living room when Finn rolled over onto his back and flung one arm out, narrowly missing the edge of the coffee table.  
  
"Get it off me!" A harsh, panicked demand, accompanied by more jerky movements. Hands clawing at thin air. "Get it off!"  
  
Maggie's first impulse was to wake him, but it was quickly mastered. In all their talks over the past two and a half months, Finn had never mentioned that he had nightmares. In fact, now that she thought about it, he had explicitly denied it several times. Had he been deliberately holding back, or was this a one-time occurrence, triggered by sleeping in a strange place? In either case, she wanted to see how the dream played out.  
  
She didn't get a chance. Finn mumbled something unintelligible under his breath, swept his arm out again, and knocked his glass off the coffee table. It didn't break, but it did make an impressive clatter as it came down. Finn sat up, blinking and looking confused.  
  
"Huh... wha-- oh, hell, I'm sorry."  
  
"It's all right." Maggie held up the undamaged glass. "No harm done."  
  
Finn swung his feet off the couch, blinking drowsily. "First I crash on your couch without asking, then I throw your dishes around. I didn't snore and wake you up, did I? That would just complete the obnoxiousness."  
  
"Considering that you probably saved my life last night, I think I'd be willing to forgive you if you snored." Maggie put the glass back on the table and sat down on the sofa next to Finn. "But you didn't. Though I'm curious to know what you were dreaming."  
  
"Nothing." He lifted his arms over his head and stretched, wincing as something popped audibly in his back. "Your couch is too short. I don't know what it is with people. _Everybody's_ couch is too short."  
  
Maggie stared at him skeptically. "Nothing?"  
  
"Yeah." The drowsiness fled from Finn's eyes, to be replaced by suspicion. "Why do you ask? You said I didn't snore..."  
  
"You didn't. But you were talking in your sleep."   
  
"I was?" He looked genuinely surprised at the idea. Maggie was sure he wasn't faking it. "What did I say?"  
  
"You said, 'Get it off me.' A couple of times." Maggie watched him curiously. "You really don't recall? You sounded rather... distressed."  
  
"Oh." Finn frowned in concentration, as if he could retrieve the memory through sheer force of will. "Nope. Don't remember a thing. Weird." The idea didn't seem to concern him much. He yawned, shook his head, and appeared to instantly put the entire subject out of his mind. "So how are you feeling this morning? All thawed out?"  
  
"Oh, yes." Maggie nodded. "No ill effects at all, except for a lingering embarrassment. I expect I'll live."   
  
Finn laughed awkwardly at that, quickly trailing off into silence. Maggie discovered that she had nothing to say either. They sat there, a decorous distance apart on the couch, not looking at each other. Maggie could appreciate the irony of it: two people whose professional relationship was predicated entirely on talking and listening, rendered mute by the terrifying prospect of early-morning chitchat. If it had been any two other people, she would've been deeply amused. Instead she resorted, rather desperately, to the fundamental social principle absorbed from her mother thirty years before: when in doubt, offer food.  
  
"Would you like some breakfast? Tea, coffee?"  
  
It worked like a charm. Finn, who had obviously been brought up on the same principle, offered a polite but clearly token refusal, then gracefully allowed himself to be persuaded. By the time they completed a joint examination of the contents of Maggie's refrigerator, debated the virtues of fried versus scrambled eggs, and determined Finn's coffee preference -- black, one sugar -- ten minutes had gone by, and all the conversational awkwardness had vanished. They sat down to breakfast in an atmosphere of relaxed domesticity.  
  
Afterwards, Finn insisted on cleaning up. Now it was Maggie's turn to protest politely before being persuaded. She left him slaving over a hot sink and returned to the bedroom, where all her earlier self-consciousness abruptly returned. Discarding her usual around-the-house wear, thermal leggings and loose wool tunic, she took a pair of pleated tan slacks and a wine-colored cashmere sweater from her closet and carried them into the bathroom with her.  
  
She took a little more time than usual in the shower, then blow-dried her hair and applied makeup just as she would've for a day at the office. Finn had finished in the kitchen while she was fussing. He was sprawled on the sofa watching the Weather Channel when Maggie came into the living room.  
  
"They say it snowed ten inches overnight," he reported. "With another ten to twelve inches still to go. There's a great big snow bank outside your front door -- I'm hoping the Jeep is somewhere under it, but I'm not really sure. Oh, and I tried to use your phone, but all I got was busy signals, no matter what number I dialed. I think the storm must've torn the phone lines down."  
  
"Wonderful." Maggie rolled her eyes. "Well, at least we have heat, hot water, and electricity. For this winter, it's an exceptionally good day."  
  
"I hope you don't mind being stuck with me for a few more hours." Finn glanced toward the window. "I know I'm risking my macho soldier-boy image when I say this, but I really don't want to go out into this mess to try and excavate the Jeep. I'm hoping if I wait a bit, the phone will work again, and I can get some of my buddies to come out and help with the shoveling."  
  
"Not a problem," Maggie assured him. She knew as well as Finn did that his right leg wouldn't hold up to the task of shoveling snow in sub-zero wind chill. And she knew equally well that he didn't like to come out and say so. "Stay as long as you need to."  
  
"Thanks." Finn smiled. "Can I use your shower?"  
  
Once Finn had vanished into the bathroom, muttering sotto voce complaints about Chanel-scented soap and the prospect of shaving with a Lady Bic, Maggie used the privacy as an opportunity to consider how she wanted to use this unexpected quality time with her patient. By the time he reappeared, she had the rest of the morning planned out.  
  
"If I recall correctly, Lieutenant, we had a session scheduled for this morning. Since we're stuck here, I think we might as well keep the appointment."  
  
"Right here? I guess it makes sense." Finn looked around the room with a look of wry amusement. "Should I lie on your couch?"  
  
"That's entirely up to you. But you don't have to decide until ten hundred hours. I believe in keeping to a schedule."  
  
This left them with nearly two hours to kill. They occupied themselves for a while by flipping through the channels on the TV, trying to keep track of how many different ways the weather announcers could find to say "it's snowing out." When that palled, which didn't take long, they collaborated on the crossword in the back of the paper. That still left an hour, so Maggie excavated the bottom of the storage closet and dug out the portable chess set she hadn't used since Sean had left. She beat Finn twice, but the second game was close.  
  
At ten hundred hours, she asked him, "Couch or chair?" and he actually appeared to consider the question seriously for a few moments.  
  
"Chair," he said finally. "I'm more used to that. Besides, your couch is--"  
  
"Too short. Yes, I know."   
  
Maggie fetched a chair from the kitchen while Finn settled into the recliner. She felt mildly nervous about the approach she'd decided to take to this session -- not because she doubted her own judgement, but because she wasn't sure how Finn would react to the suggestion. Since the only way to find out was to ask, she plowed straight ahead.  
  
"Would you object to being hypnotized, Lieutenant?"  
  
Finn's face instantly creased into a suspicious frown. "What for?"  
  
Well, at least he didn't refuse outright. Maggie decided to take that as a hopeful sign. "You couldn't remember your dream this morning. I want to see what else you're not remembering."  
  
His frown deepened. "I thought all that repressed memory crap's been discredited."  
  
"Most of it has," Maggie admitted. "I'm sure you read the literature when you were in school. But I'm not looking for your hidden childhood trauma, Lieutenant, and if you've ever been abducted by aliens while walking in the family cornfield, I don't want to know about it. I just want to see you go over the events in Rwanda in a more... focused way. Will you try?"  
  
"My family doesn't _have_ a cornfield," he muttered with the exasperated air of someone who'd been making the same disclaimer throughout his adult life. Maggie ignored it and just kept looking at him expectantly until he rolled his eyes and sighed. "Yeah, I guess I'll try."  
  
"Good." Maggie placed her chair directly opposite his, with the coffee table between them. "Have you ever done this before?"  
  
"No. Have you?"  
  
"Oh, yes. More times than I can count. I used to work in an addiction clinic when I was in graduate school. This was one of the standard treatments for smokers."  
  
"Great," Finn said cheerfully. "You can stop me biting my nails while you're at it."  
  
"That costs extra," Maggie told him. "Now sit back, make yourself comfortable, and look at the wall behind me. Focus on a spot a few inches below the ceiling."  
  
"Yes, Ma'am." Finn saluted with exaggerated precision before following instructions. Maggie let him sit for a count of ten before she began to speak.  
  
"I'd like you to concentrate on your breathing." She let her words fall into a slow, almost sing-song cadence. "Feel the rhythm of it, nice and even... that's good. Now if you feel comfortable, try to slow it down a little... deep slow breaths... relax as you exhale, feel the tension flow out of your body just as the air does... very good. You may find that your limbs start to feel heavier as you relax. Your eyelids may start drooping a little... go ahead and close your eyes whenever you feel comfortable."  
  
Finn's eyes fluttered closed. His shoulders drooped a little, and he sank a bit lower in the chair. Maggie waited another ten-count.  
  
"I want you to think of a place you like, somewhere you feel safe and peaceful. Imagine yourself in that place now... do you have a picture in your mind?"  
  
Finn nodded. Maggie pitched her voice to a lower, more soothing tone, and watched his face and posture carefully as she continued.  
  
"Tell me where you are."  
  
"In a field." Finn's voice was distant. "Outside of Ankeny. It used to be the Connors' cow pasture, but they lost the farm when I was a kid."  
  
A cow pasture in Iowa. How stereotypically bucolic. Maggie's imagination, indulging an uncharacteristic flight of fancy, conjured a picture of Finn standing in waist-high grass, dressed in denim overalls and a tattered straw hat, chewing on a stalk of hay. It was a good thing Finn's eyes were closed. He probably wouldn't have appreciated the amusement on her face.  
  
"Describe it."  
  
Finn's shoulders lifted about an inch before relaxing back into their earlier slouch. "There's nothing there really. Just grass and a couple of wooden poles where the fence used to be. It's a quiet place. There's a dirt road cutting diagonally across the grass, but I'm not near it."  
  
"Where are you?"  
  
"Farther back. I left my bike leaning up against a pole, and I'm lying in the grass. It's high enough so that if anyone comes by on the road, they won't see me."  
  
"What time of year is it?"  
  
"Summer."  
  
"The sun is warm on your face. You feel safe and relaxed. You may hear birds singing if you listen carefully." She paused to see if Finn would contradict her. When he didn't, she suggested more details: the smell of flowers, the humming of bees, white clouds drifting across a blue sky. Finn accepted each suggestion with an easy nod. From time to time, Maggie repeated her assertion that he felt safe and relaxed, and with each repetition his posture grew more limp, until he looked as if might slide right out of the chair.   
  
"Very good," Maggie said once she was sure that his trance was deep enough. "Now I'm going to ask you some questions, and I want you to take your time answering them. I want you to visualize the events I'll be asking you about, replay them in your mind as if you're watching a movie. You'll be able to see yourself, too, but it will be your past self. Your real, present self is safe in your quiet place, and cannot be harmed by anything you see. Do you understand this?"  
  
For a moment Finn didn't respond. Then his eyes flickered slightly behind their lids, and he nodded -- a slow, languid motion, as if he was moving his head through water.  
  
"Very good," Maggie said again. "Now, I want you to go back to Rwanda, on the morning of August eighth. You're sitting in the back of the transport with the rest of your platoon, and you hear an explosion..."  
  
The details of the incident were thoroughly familiar to her, but she paid careful attention anyway, searching for anything new. The trance stripped away Finn's customary bantering manner, and he gave an unusually animated account of the ambush, complete with sound effects for the explosion and the gunfire. But the details were no different from the descriptions he'd given in the past.  
  
"Let's skip ahead a few minutes," she told him. "Your captain has just told you to check the houses near the road, in case anyone is trapped inside. You walk up to the first house, and shine a light through the window. What happens next?"  
  
"There's something..." Finn trailed off, suddenly hesitant. "There's something moving inside."  
  
"What it is?"  
  
"I-- I can't see." Finn's breathing grew a little faster. A muscle under his left eye twitched. "It's dark."  
  
"You have a flashlight. You're shining it through the window. What do you see?"  
  
"I can't tell. The floor is covered with trash. I can see it shifting around... something's moving under there, but I can't tell what it is." Finn's face took on a distressed expression. Maggie wasn't sure if this was a reaction to the memory, or just to his failure to provide a satisfactory answer to her question. She concentrated on keeping her voice cool and neutral, devoid of either judgement or expectation.  
  
"What do you do next?"  
  
"I go inside."   
  
"Into the house?"  
  
"Yes. There's no door, most of the front wall's fallen in, so I just step through the gap. There's rubble everywhere. I have to keep kicking it out of the way so I can walk. And... something smells bad. Like... like rotting meat." The tic under Finn's eye grew more pronounced. There was a faint sheen of sweat on his upper lip. "I don't want to be here," he whispered.  
  
"You're not," Maggie reminded him. "This is your past, remember? You're only watching from the outside."  
  
He shook his head and tugged at the neck of his sweater. "I don't wanna..."  
  
"It's a memory," Maggie said soothingly. "It happened months ago, and you survived. It can't harm you now. All you need to do is observe it and describe what you see. Do you think you can do that?"  
  
Finn hesitated so long, Maggie thought she might have to give up and terminate the session. But then he nodded, though his expression remained unsure. "Okay."  
  
"Go on, then."  
  
"I shine my light over the floor, but there's nothing moving now. I call out, and there's a... a whimpering sort of noise, like a hurt puppy... or a child. I can't tell where it's coming from, all I see is dirt and trash and bits of broken wood. I step forward and..." He fell silent again.   
  
"And?" Maggie prompted.  
  
"I step on something soft, and it moves. My foot comes out from under me. I'm falling, I try catch myse-- _oh, shit_!"  
  
Maggie jumped, startled as much by the unexpected swear word as she was by the sudden rise in Finn's voice. In the time she'd known him, Finn had been the most clean-spoken soldier she'd ever encountered.  
  
"What is it?" she demanded once she was sure she had her voice under control.  
  
"Get it off me!" Finn thrashed in the chair, tossing jerkily from side to side, arms curled protectively over his head. "Oh God... get it off!" He sounded genuinely terrified, almost hysterical. Maggie had to fight down the impulse to touch him. She settled for sliding her chair closer.  
  
"Get what off? Lieutenant... Lieutenant Finn... Riley!"  
  
He didn't seem to hear. He was in a panic, chanting "get it off me, get it off me" at ever-rising volume, thrashing around so violently, Maggie was afraid he'd throw himself right out of his chair. She had to almost shout to make herself heard.  
  
"Riley! It's all right, you're safe. It's not real, remember, it's a memory, it can't hurt you, you're safe here with me."  
  
She knew she'd made a mistake as soon as the words were out of her mouth. She'd gone through the whole rigmarole about Iowa cow pastures just to give him a safe place to retreat to if something went wrong, and now that it had, she'd ignored her own preparations and, to make things worse, associated his safety with her own presence. Still, it did seem to be having the desired effect -- Finn had stopped chanting and was holding himself reasonably still, though his breath came in short gasps and his arms still shielded his face.   
  
"You're safe," Maggie told him again, carefully avoiding any mention of a location this time. She didn't want to confuse him by changing tracks, but there was no point in reinforcing her error, either.  
  
"Safe..." Finn repeated in a dazed voice. Maggie nodded, then remembered his eyes were still closed.  
  
"Yes. There's nothing to be afraid of here. Can you see that now?"  
  
He hesitated, then nodded, lowering his arms a few inches "Yeah..."  
  
"Good. Now, can you tell me what frightened you.?"  
  
Finn swallowed audibly, and shivered. "It was choking me."  
  
"What?"  
  
"The monster."  
  
"The monster." Maggie blinked a few times as she absorbed that answer. "There was a monster inside the house?"  
  
"Uh-huh."  
  
"I see..." Maggie took a deep breath and tried to collect her racing thoughts. _Don't leap to conclusions. Don't ask leading questions._ "What kind of monster? I mean, can you describe it?"  
  
"I don't know." Finn's shaking was getting worse, and Maggie was fairly sure it had nothing to do with the temperature in the room. He'd lowered his arms from over his head and was hugging himself tightly, but it was doing little to contain his shivering. "I dropped my flashlight when I fell, I couldn't see much. But I could feel..." He trailed off, panting for breath as if he'd been running.  
  
Maggie repeated the usual reassuring phrases, fighting not to sound too impatient. She could feel the tinge of anticipation in the pit of her stomach, the mounting sense of inevitability that always preceded a breakthrough. She was about to get some answers, to finally accomplish something, but she could still spoil it if she rushed the session or pushed Finn too hard. So she made herself wait until he was breathing normally again before she resumed her questioning.  
  
"What did you feel?"  
  
"Arms." Finn choked out the word, flinching away from whatever memory he was replaying in his mind. "Like human, but... not. Too many of them, and... and they were bending wrong. Like they had too many elbows. I could feel them around my neck and my waist and my legs, and there was this gibbering noise, and something was moving under me, and it was really big and-- get it off me! Getitoffgetitoff..."  
  
He was hyperventilating again. Maggie risked a light touch of her hand on his shoulder, hoping the contact would help anchor him in the present.  
  
"It's all right, Riley. We're done. I'm going to count back from ten now, and when I reach one, you will wake up and open your eyes. You will remember everything we've talked about, but you'll feel calm and safe. Ten, nine, eight..."  
  
At the count of one, Finn opened his eyes with a startled gasp. For a few seconds he sat perfectly rigid, with a frozen, deer-in-the-headlights look on his face. Then he heaved himself out of the chair and bolted for the bathroom.  
  
_So much for waking up feeling calm and safe._ Maggie went after him, but he shut the door and locked it before she could catch up. She raised her hand to knock, then thought better of it and leaned against the wall to wait. Through the door, she could hear retching sounds, followed by the toilet flushing and the water running.  
  
"There's mouthwash in the cabinet," she called out.  
  
There was no response at first, but after a while she heard him say "Thanks" in a muffled voice. Another minute passed before the water was shut off and the door opened. Finn stood in the doorway, looking pale and dazed, clutching a towel in his hands. The hair around his face was damp, and his clothes were splashed with water. His eyes, when he finally turned to look at Maggie, looked dull and clouded.  
  
"Sorry," he muttered. "Kinda lost it there for a moment."   
  
"Quite all right." Maggie smiled at him with what she hoped was a calming, reassuring expression. "It's a perfectly reasonable reaction under the circumstances."  
  
"Circumstances. Right." Finn gave a short, brittle laugh, not quite hysterical but clearly headed in that direction. "You mean like finding out that I'm a total head case -- those circumstances?"  
  
"I think it's too early to--"  
  
"I remember it now." Finn's voice sounded flat and defeated. He slumped against the wall on the other side of the door from Maggie, looking as if he needed the support to stay on his feet. "The sounds, the movements, all those weird arms groping at me... I remember it all, just as if it really happened. Which it didn't. Couldn't." He pressed the heel of one hand against his forehead, as if trying to push the unwanted memory out of the way. "That's some hallucination, huh? Full sensory detail. I can even remember what it smelled like. Thank god it didn't kick in while the shooting was still going on, who knows what I might've done... gotten people killed, probably..."  
  
The puzzle pieces began to click into place in Maggie's mind. "You think it was some sort of fear reaction?"  
  
"I didn't think I was all that scared. Everything happened so fast. But this was my first time in combat, and the next thing I know I'm imagining monsters in the dark. Gee, you think there's a connection?"  
  
"What do _you_ think?"  
  
If Finn recognized the question as the oldest tactic in psychotherapy, he gave no sign of it. "I think I freaked. Must've been more scared than I thought. God, can you imagine if it had happened a minute earlier, when I was standing there holding my gun? I might've shot somebody thinking it was the Bogey Man." He was shaking again, sliding slowly down the wall as he spoke, until he was sitting on the floor with his knees pulled up to his chest. "And then I didn't even remember. God. They're going to kick me out of the Army, aren't they? Gonna send me home with a Section Eight."  
  
He looked so miserable, Maggie wanted to hug him. Instead she sat down on the floor next to him so that they could speak at eye-level.  
  
"Actually," she said, "your not remembering makes a certain amount of sense. You know that what happened to you was impossible, therefore it didn't happen, therefore you don't remember it because there's nothing to remember. As for a Section Eight -- aren't you overreacting a bit?"  
  
He gave her a bleak stare. "What would _you_ do with an officer who's given to hallucinations and selective amnesia in times of stress?"  
  
"We don't know that you're given to anything. This happened once. We don't know exactly why, and we have no reason to believe it'll happen again."  
  
"Right. So would you hand me a gun and put me in the field, not knowing if it might happen again?"  
  
"That's not my decision. Of course, the entire question is moot if you never complete your physical therapy because you collapse every time your doctor suggests you might be improving."  
  
Finn's expression went from depressed to confused to stunned in the space of about two seconds. "Wait-- you mean-- you think that's why I-- Shit!" He banged his head lightly against the wall behind him. "I'm more screwed up than I thought, aren't I?"  
  
This was infuriating. Maggie had seen enough in the past year to be almost certain that Finn had, in fact, encountered a "monster" in Rwanda. His sketchy description did not match either of the two specimens at the lab, but then they didn't match each other either, did they? Who knew how many types of Hostiles were out there? The problem was, she could say none of this to Finn himself, not without the appropriate clearance from the Pentagon -- and she seriously doubted that the men in charge of the HST project would be open to the idea of revealing classified information to an obscure Second Lieutenant for the sake of his mental health.   
  
National security was all very well, but she couldn't leave Finn in this state. She had to tell him something. Some cover story that would reassure him of his sanity without getting Maggie arrested in the process.   
  
"I realize it's difficult, but let's try to look at this rationally. You didn't experience anything unusual during the ambush itself, did you?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Or immediately afterwards?"  
  
"No."   
  
"Or when you first entered the house and started your search?"  
  
"No." Finn frowned a little, but the expression was more thoughtful than distressed. "Where are you going with this?"  
  
"I'm just trying to determine when this supposed hallucination of yours began. As far as I can tell, it started after the roof fell in on you."  
  
"Not exactly. I saw things moving inside before I ever went in."  
  
"Yes, but you didn't immediately assume you were seeing a monster, did you?"  
  
"Of course not." Finn looked mildly offended at the suggestion, which Maggie took as a good sign. "I figured _maybe_ an injured person, but most likely rats, or a stray dog or something."  
  
"Which was a perfectly reasonable thing to assume. It was probably true, even. And that brings us back to my original point." Maggie shifted her position on the floor so that she could look Finn directly in the face from where she sat. "There were no monsters, in your mind or anywhere else, until after the roof came down. Meaning, after the two broken legs and the bleeding and the head injury." She put a subtle emphasis on the last two words. Finn didn't answer right away, and she wondered if perhaps she'd been a little too subtle, but then he lifted his head a little and she saw the first glimmer of hope in his face.  
  
"You think that might've caused it?" His eyes begged her to say "yes."  
  
"I think it's very likely," Maggie said. "You were in pain, in shock, concussed, and buried alive. You felt like something was crushing the breath out of you -- and something really was. It may not have been an actual living creature attacking you, but I can certainly see how it may have felt that way."  
  
Finn listened to her bit of rationalization with the air of a drowning man who'd just been thrown a rope. He was nodding before Maggie even finished speaking.  
  
"Yes, that makes sense. At least, more sense than anything else. I mean... it's a little weird, but it's not _crazy_, you know?"  
  
That, Maggie thought wryly, was a perfect illustration of why HST's had remained undiscovered for so long. Riley Finn was a reasonably intelligent and level-headed young man, with several years of training designed to make him function well in high-pressure situations. Yet it took three months of therapy to get him to even acknowledge what he'd experienced, and even then he jumped at the first alternative explanation he was offered. The Hostiles would need to dance in the streets in broad daylight before the world took notice.  
  
"Oh, man, that is so..." Finn shook his head and ran one hand through his hair, making the wet strands above his forehead stand up in spikes. "It's like I've been holding my breath all this time and didn't even know it. And now I'm breathing again and _damn_, it feels good."  
  
"Glad I could help," Maggie said cheerfully. Finn looked at her with an expression of gratitude that bordered on goddess-worship.  
  
"You're _brilliant_, " he said fervently, and kissed her.  
  
For a few moments, Maggie was too stunned to react. Her mind duly registered the weight of Finn's hand on the back of her neck, the pressure of his mouth on hers, the faint taste of her cinnamon mouthwash on his tongue, but it was as if the whole thing was happening to someone else a vast distance away. Some other, unfamiliar woman twined her fingers in Finn's hair and shifted her weight forward into his arms. It wasn't until he broke the kiss and whispered "Maggie..." in a hoarse whisper before pressing his lips against the base of her neck that she snapped back to reality.  
  
Reality brought on an instant rush of panic. Maggie braced her hands against Finn's and pushed.  
  
"Wait."  
  
He pulled back immediately. "I'm sorry. I know we shouldn't, but..."  
  
"Shouldn't" didn't even begin to cover it. Just thinking of the possible consequences made Maggie feel slightly faint. She could lose her license. They both could lose their commissions. Only God and the Pentagon knew how her bosses at the lab would react. She needed to put a stop to this right now, to say something stern and off-putting, to get him out of her apartment as soon as humanly possible--  
  
And to go back to her life of budget forms, dull seminars and administrative meetings. To endless, unheard monologues at her son's bedside. To eating out alone on Friday nights. How many years had she spent being competent and professional? How many more years could she maintain it just so she could keep coming home to an empty apartment night after night? Decades, probably, and the sheer oppressiveness of the thought made her want to scream.  
  
She didn't, of course. Maggie Walsh never screamed. But she didn't do any of the things she knew she should, either. Finn was still holding her, and their faces were just a few inches apart. Maggie cupped one hand under his chin and brushed her thumb across his lips.  
  
"It doesn't matter," she said, and drew him forward into another kiss.  
  
There was a perfectly good sofa just a few feet away from them, and an even better queen-sized bed in the next room, yet neither of them suggested moving. They undressed each other in between kisses, tossing their clothes in random directions. Maggie had another brief moment of panic over the possibility that "yeah, she's kind of hot" was not a strong enough sentiment from a twenty-three-year-old boy to survive the actual sight of a middle-aged woman with her clothes off. She froze for a moment when he removed her sweater, dreading his reaction. But he only whispered her name again in a low, unsteady voice, and bent his head down to kiss the tops of her breasts as he reached around to unfasten her bra.  
  
Riley made love with more enthusiasm than finesse, but Maggie had been alone long enough to be in the mood to appreciate youthful enthusiasm, especially when it came packaged with a long-limbed, muscular body and a charming willingness to put hands and mouth where directed. She could teach him the finer points another time, Maggie thought as she caught her breath, and was only mildly surprised to find that she was taking it as a given that there would be another time.  
  
There was a long silence afterwards, and Maggie couldn't quite decide if it was companionable or just awkward. They took turns cleaning up in the bathroom, gathered up their clothes, dressed, returned to the living room and sat on the sofa. Riley picked up the remote, did another scan of the news reports -- it was still snowing everywhere -- and clicked the TV off again. Maggie thought he might be working himself up to a round of generic small talk about the weather, but all he did was tuck his feet up onto the sofa, and settle back against the cushions. Then he hooked two fingers into the waistband of her slacks and tugged. For a moment, Maggie thought he wanted to have sex again. Before she could decide how she wanted to react to that, he pulled her up against his side, wrapped his arms around her waist, and then held still.  
  
Oh. He wanted to cuddle. How... sweet.  
  
Maggie rested her head on Riley's shoulder. It was a good shoulder, broad and solid, comfortable to lean on. Maggie folded her hands over Riley's where they rested on her hip, and closed her eyes.  
  
She must've dozed off a little, because when she opened her eyes again, her left leg was asleep and the patch of sunlight on the floor had moved several feet further from the window. Maggie sat up and rubbed the back of her calf, wincing.  
  
"You okay?" Riley murmured?  
  
"Fine." She flexed her leg a couple of times. "I'm sorry. Didn't mean to fall asleep on you like that."  
  
"It's okay. But I'd like to get up now, if you don't mind."  
  
"Of course." Maggie shifted over to give him room. Riley kissed the top of her head before he stood.  
  
"Blizzard seems to be done. I want to try the phone again, see if it's working."  
  
Maggie turned toward the window. There was over a foot of snow piled on the sill, and a matte coating of frost along the top of the pane, but she could see that it was no longer snowing. It should've been a welcome sight, but somehow it wasn't.  
  
Riley leaned against the wall next to the phone cradle, holding the receiver against his ear with his shoulder as he dialed. He listened for a few seconds, then grinned and gave her the thumbs-up sign. That, too, wasn't nearly as welcome as it should've been.  
  
"Hello?" Riley pulled over a chair and straddled it, somehow managing not to drop the phone in the process. "Is Lieutenant Gates there? Forrest? Hey, man, it's Riley... no, I didn't desert, don't be a moron... Look, I know you're oblivious, but even you must've noticed the big honking blizzard... Oh, shut up. I need you to do me a favor..."  
  
Maggie listened to the one-sided conversation with a growing anxiety. She wished the phone hadn't worked. She wished it was still snowing. As long as they'd been isolated by the weather, it had been relatively easy to pretend that the events of the day concerned no one but themselves. But now the world was about to intrude, and the qualms she'd brushed aside earlier began to loom large. Maggie wished she knew what Riley was thinking. He looked relaxed and easy-going, bantering on the phone with his friend; but she'd had over two months to learn to distrust that look. It occurred to her that she had given this boy the power to end her career -- both her careers -- with a single incautious word.  
  
"Okay, man, I'll see you soon." Riley hung up the phone and stood. For a moment, Maggie allowed herself to be distracted by the shifting of muscles under denim as he swung his leg over the chair. But that only increased her unease once she gathered her thoughts. She wasn't thinking straight, at a time when straight thinking was essential. Maggie made a superhuman effort and marshalled her thoughts into some semblance of order.  
  
"Is everything all right?" she asked.  
  
"All set. I've got a gullible sucker -- I mean, generous friend -- coming to help shovel the Jeep out. He'll be here as fast as he can navigate a Humvee through this mess." Riley walked back to the sofa, but didn't sit down. Instead he fidgeted, shifting from foot to foot and looking down at Maggie with a worried frown. Was he having doubts too?  
  
"Look, Maggie... this is kind of... I mean, we could get in trouble for this, couldn't we?"  
  
The trouble was a lot more likely to fall on her side, but Maggie saw no advantage in pointing this out.  
  
"We could."  
  
"Well, I'm not going to tell anyone, so you don't have to worry about that." He thrust out his chin and looked determined, like an action hero resolving to jump off a cliff. "But I'm not sorry it happened... are you?"  
  
Ah. A different sort of doubts, then. Maggie smiled reassuringly and took his hand. "Of course I'm not sorry. And you shouldn't be either. We'll just need to be careful, that's all."  
  
"That's okay. I can do careful." He finally sat down, looking relieved. "I'm thinking you really shouldn't be my therapist anymore. Not that I want to switch, but--"  
  
"No, you're right," Maggie said quickly. "I'll take care of it." It was probably a bit late to be shutting the barn door, but it still had to be done. Seville might wonder at Riley's sudden desire to switch, after previous refusals, but there were any number of plausible explanations for that, and Maggie would come up with one as soon as she could concentrate properly again.  
  
Lieutenant Gates arrived half an hour later, bearing a pair of shovels and complaining loudly about ungrateful bastards who made their long-suffering friends go out into the cold and forced them to do heavy labor. Riley bore the tirade with his usual good humor, interrupting only once to introduce Maggie.   
  
"So you're Riley's shrink, huh?" Gates smirked as he shook her hand. "You've got your work cut out for you, then, 'cause that boy's a raving psycho." There was an appraising gleam in his eye, and Maggie wondered if he was recalling the conversation at the Toucan. She made a mental note to warn Riley to be extra cautious with what he said in front of Lieutenant Gates.  
  
It took the two men over an hour to clear the snow around Riley's jeep. Afterwards they came upstairs again and Maggie, feeling very much like a den mother, served them hot cocoa and sandwiches. They left a few minutes later. Riley said goodbye with perfectly professional demeanor, shaking Maggie's hand and calling her "Major Walsh." But he stroked his thumb across the back of her wrist during the handshake, a caress so brief, Maggie wasn't sure if she imagined it. She managed to say "Goodbye, Lieutenant" in a cool and steady voice as she ushered him out after Gates. But she stood by the door for an unreasonably long time after they were gone, absently rubbing her wrist where he'd touched her.  
  
  
**TBC**  
  


   [1]: MAILTO:mcq79@hotmail.com



	4. Hazy Shade of Winter -- Chapter 4

Hazy Shade of Winter 4

**Hazy Shade of Winter -- Part 4**  
**by [Mariner][1]**

  
  


> _Notes and disclaimers in Part 1_  
  
IX  
  
For the next several days, Maggie lived in constant expectation of disaster. Riley was going to say something incautious to a friend, or a CO, or his new therapist, and ruin both their lives. The fact that Riley had not said a single incautious word in months of therapy did nothing to allay the anxiety. Every time Seville invited her into his office, every time Angleman looked in her direction at the lab, she would brace herself, relaxing only slightly when presented with a routine work-related query.  
  
Michael's doctors approved her for visiting again, and she almost told him the whole story just to get it off her chest, but the fear of being overheard by someone pausing outside the door stopped her.   
  
As the days wore on and no professional disaster struck, more personal fears began to intrude. She and Riley had decided -- or rather, Maggie had decided and Riley had agreed -- that they would have no contact with each other for a week after Maggie transferred his case to Zimmerman. That way, if they were seen together, they could claim with at least some degree of verisimilitude that the relationship started after Riley was no longer Maggie's patient. It had seemed like a reasonable precaution at the time. But as the week dragged to a close, she was seized with a conviction that the delay would kill Riley's interest. Left to his own devices for a week, he would find some pretty young thing, or lose his enthusiasm, or simply get cold feet. Several times, Maggie nearly broke her own resolution and called him, but she managed to control the impulse in time. She told herself it was common sense that bolstered her restraint, but it was only fear of humiliation.  
  
They had also decided, as part of the arrangement, that Riley would be the one to call when the week was up. It was safer that way: since Maggie lived alone, there was no danger of anyone else taking the call or overhearing their conversation. The night before their deadline, Maggie made a resolution to spend the next day in her usual working routine, and not keep vigil by the phone like a dithering schoolgirl waiting to be asked to the prom.  
  
She never got a chance to test her resolve. The phone rang ten minutes after midnight.  
  
"I need to see you."  
  
"Riley?" Maggie sat up groggily, trying to untangle herself from the covers without dropping the phone. "Do you know what time it is?"   
  
"Yes. I'm sorry. I was going crazy with the waiting. I couldn't sleep. I had to hear your voice. You said to call Monday, and it's Monday. Can I see you this morning? We could have breakfast."  
  
It would've been annoying if it wasn't so flattering. Maggie tried to affect annoyance, for the sake of future sleep, but found it difficult to keep up an appropriately stern tone.  
  
"I have a breakfast meeting. Which I will probably sleep through, thanks to you. I should make you call back in another week, just to teach you some patience."  
  
"Don't be cruel. Look what you've done to me. I'm talking in Elvis Presley song titles. Are you lonesome tonight? Love me tender. Help me make it through the night. I want you, I need you, I--"  
  
"You ain't nothing but a hound dog," Maggie told him. "And I can't meet you for breakfast. Or lunch. How about dinner?"  
  
"You're going to make me wait all day? Sadist. Okay, how about I pick you up at your office at six, and we'll--"   
  
"No!" Maggie hadn't meant to shout, but the image of an enthusiastic, Elvis-quoting Riley showing up at the hospital to pick her up for a date triggered an attack of near-panic. "We'll meet somewhere. Not on the base."  
  
"OK. How about the Toucan?"  
  
"No privacy. We need someplace quiet." She closed her eyes for a moment, visualizing the town's layout in her sleep-fogged brain. A hotel restaurant would be best, she decided. It would be empty this time of year and less likely to be frequented by locals. "You know the Sheraton on Route 17?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"They've got a restaurant downstairs. Meet me there at seven."  
  
"It's a date."  
  
  
  
  
  
She took a garment bag to the hospital with her, and changed into a navy blue wool dress with a rather daring neckline before leaving work for the day. She told herself it was a practical thing to do -- the dress was warmer and more comfortable than the uniform -- but that pretense collapsed when she spent nearly ten minutes fussing with her hair.  
  
"You'll be stuffing socks in your bra next," she muttered irritably to herself as she marched from the bathroom. A passing nurse paused to give her a startled look before moving on in a hurry.  
  
Riley was waiting in the restaurant when Maggie came in. Her earlier comments about privacy had apparently made an impression, since he'd claimed a booth in an alcove in the back, out of sight of most of the other tables. Still, Maggie was glad to find that the only other people present were a tired-looking couple fussing over a crying baby in a high chair, and a lone businessman engrossed in his newspaper. Riley was in uniform, and Maggie immediately felt annoyed with herself for changing, but the way his eyes widened when he stood up and took her coat dispelled all her misgivings.  
  
"You look great." He put one hand in the small of her back and kissed her lightly on the lips before moving the table out so she could slide into the booth. "I've been thinking about you all day. And all week. I nearly lost another truck, that's how distracted I was. But I'm all better now."  
  
"You certainly seem to be moving better." Maggie watched him as he pushed the table back into place and sat down. His cane was still there, leaning up against the wall of the booth, but his movements were noticeably less stiff than usual. "How's your leg?"  
  
"Way better. I went through three physical therapy sessions with Dr. Lerner, and not a single problem. Dr. Zimmerman says if I don't relapse in the next couple of weeks, he'll give me a clean bill of mental health. So I'm officially sane now, all thanks to you." He flung out his arms and pitched his voice to a dramatic wail. "Oh, Doctor, you're a miracle worker!"  
  
Maggie shook her head, laughing. "I don't know about that. You still seem crazy to me."  
  
He reached across the table, took her hand and kissed it. "That's just from missing you."  
  
Pleasant as it was to sit in a restaurant and be complimented, Maggie couldn't help looking around surreptitiously to see if anyone was paying attention to them. But the other customers were absorbed in their own business, and the waitress, when she finally deigned to come over, took their order with an air of bored indifference. They probably took her for Riley's mother, or a maiden aunt. Maggie decided it was for the best.  
  
Riley ordered a cheeseburger and a beer. Maggie asked for a chef's salad and a glass of Perrier. Riley continued to hold her hands while they waited for their food to arrive.  
  
"So tell me about yourself. It's my turn to listen."  
  
Maggie raised her eyebrows. "We're taking turns?"  
  
"Come on. I've been pouring out my life story to you for weeks. You must be sick to death of it. But I hardly know anything about you."  
  
"What do you want to know?"  
  
"Everything."  
  
Maggie was quite sure he didn't want to know about her acrimonious divorce, or her brain-damaged son, or the mind-numbing routine of her work at the hospital. The HST project would've probably fascinated him, but she couldn't talk about that. Which left... well, nothing really. Yet there was Riley, looking at her as if he expected diamonds to drop from her lips at any moment. In desperation, Maggie dredged up a few anecdotes from her graduate-student days at Harvard. This tided them over until the bored waitress brought their food, which at least provided an excuse for not talking.  
  
Afterwards, since they were at a hotel anyway, they went and got a room. They didn't do any talking there, either.  
  
  
  
  
  
That evening set the pattern for all the encounters that followed. Maggie quickly became an expert on the roadside restaurants and small hotels around Ft. Tyrone as she selected the locations for their dates. The choice always fell to her, since Riley's ideas were uniformly impractical.   
  
"How about Antonio's?" he'd say, blithely naming the most expensive -- and blatantly romantic -- restaurant in town. Or, "The Raintree has no cover charge on Wednesday nights. Want to go? You could teach me to dance." Maggie suspected that he would've been declaring their relationship from the rooftops if she didn't keep him in check.  
  
Not that she didn't understand the temptation. It was wretchedly difficult to be happy and not be able to talk about it. And equally difficult not to give herself away even without talking.  
  
"You're looking happy today." Angleman peered at her suspiciously as he handed her a printout of the latest blood work results on the new HST. "Did you have a brilliant breakthrough while I wasn't paying attention?" He tried to make a joke out of it, but there was a forced note in his laugh and a distinctly paranoid squint in his eye. Maggie allowed a trace of smugness to creep into her smile.  
  
"If I do have one," she told him, "you'll be one of the first to know."   
  
That kept him suitably distracted for the rest of the evening.  
  
The new HST didn't have the rapid regenerative ability of the first, but its blood type and tissue structure proved remarkably similar, and Angleman's serum worked even better on it than on the rats. Maggie was sure that an organ transplant from either creature to the other would be successful. She sent reports to the Pentagon twice a week, describing her findings in minute detail and dropping discreet reminders about her research proposal. Perseverance paid off: after three weeks, the proposal received final approval, with only minor changes to the budget request. The expression on Angleman's face as he forced himself to congratulate her was priceless.  
  
His reaction to hearing the details was even better.  
  
"You want to transplant _body parts_ from one Hostile to another? What the hell for?"  
  
"It's a preliminary step. The details are in here." Maggie handed him a copy of the project specs. "I'm thinking we should start with a non-essential part -- a hand or a foot, perhaps. Less chance of death in case of rejection, and we can always amputate if all else fails."  
  
Angleman's face got redder and redder as he paged through the specs. "A human-demon hybrid? Enhanced soldiers? Don't take it the wrong way, Doctor, but I think you've seen too many bad movies."  
  
Maggie shrugged. "You don't have to participate, Doctor. I had hoped you would do the surgery, of course, but if you'd rather not involve yourself in something this controversial, I'm sure there are other neurosurgeons available."  
  
"That won't be necessary," Angleman muttered. He looked as if he'd been chewing on a lemon. "I'll need to order some equipment first. Our operating room isn't set up for anything this delicate."  
  
"Order whatever you want," Maggie said graciously. "I promise I'll approve it."  
  
The professional victory put Maggie in a celebratory state of mind, so when Riley appeared, bouncing with enthusiasm and brandishing a three-day pass, she allowed him to talk her into a weekend in Chicago. They drove out in Maggie's car and stayed at the Hilton. Maggie contrived to be in the car, retrieving a conveniently forgotten pocketbook, while Riley checked in. As a precautionary measure it wasn't much, but at least the clerk at the reception desk didn't see them sign in together.  
  
"I have to admit," she murmured as they sprawled sweatily across the king-sized bed, "this was one of your better ideas."  
  
"I'm glad you like it." Riley kissed her left elbow, which was the spot closest to his mouth. "But I wish you'd tell me what the special occasion is."  
  
"Mmm?" Maggie didn't have the energy to actually lift her head from the pillow and look at him, so she settled for craning her neck in his general direction. "What makes you think there's a special occasion?"  
  
"Come on. Before this, every time I suggested we go someplace nice, you looked at me like I asked you to have sex on the parade ground at high noon on the Fourth of July. Now it's suddenly, 'Yes, Riley, that would be lovely.' What are we celebrating?"  
  
"Nothing." Maggie rolled onto her side and curled one arm around Riley's waist. "I just thought I'd humor you for once."  
  
"Want to humor me some more?"  
  
"Depends." Maggie gave him a suspicious look. "What's on your mind?"  
  
"Let's have a date that doesn't involve a hotel. We could... go to a movie or something. And then back to my place. Or your place. Or any place where I don't have to show a credit card and a picture ID before I make love to you."  
  
Oh, God, not that conversation again. Maggie was _not_ going to be drawn in this time.  
  
"I'm fairly sure we don't like the same kind of movies, Riley."  
  
"That's okay. I'll see whatever artsy chick-flick you want to see. It can even have Tom Hanks in it."  
  
"I'll think about it." Maggie moved a little closer and trailed her fingernails across Riley's stomach, just above the hip bones. That usually served to distract him from undesirable topics of conversation.  
  
Worked this time, too.  
  
  
  
  
  
Angleman's surgical equipment arrived in due time, and work on the project began in earnest. Maggie had to give the man credit: he had not been pleased to have his work supplanted by Maggie's project, but once the resentment wore off, he responded to the challenge of the transplant surgery with fine professional enthusiasm. Maggie, prepared to be generous now that she was in charge, helped him map the two hostiles' nervous and circulatory systems in preparation for the procedure.  
  
Following Maggie's initial suggestion, they used the subjects' left hands for the first transplant. The actual operation took over eighteen hours. By the time it was over, Maggie and Angleman were both so exhausted they could barely stand, but there had been no complications, and Angleman declared himself to be "cautiously optimistic."  
  
Hostile 2 justified that optimism almost immediately. Its new hand looked incongruous: far too large for the bony arm it was now attached to, dull gray scales contrasting oddly with gleaming dark purple skin. It functioned perfectly, however; even the retractable claws worked.  
  
Hostile 1 didn't do nearly as well. Its entire forearm swelled up like a balloon, blood seeping from the sutures in a steady trickle. The skin on the transplanted hand turned a mottled, yellowish gray and began to peel away in strips. After two days, Angleman admitted failure and amputated the creature's arm just below the elbow.  
  
"I don't understand it," he complained. "This was the one I had high hopes for. It's stronger, it heals faster, we've had more time to study it. It doesn't make sense."  
  
"Maybe the healing factor is what caused the problem," Maggie suggested. "Perhaps it recognized the new limb as foreign, and tried to reject it so that it could grow a new one properly."  
  
"It's possible." Angleman drummed his fingers on the desk as he considered this explanation. "A hard hypothesis to test, with only two subjects to work with and no control group... if we could find a way to suppress the healing temporarily, we could try again with the other hand..." He trailed off, stared into the distance for a few seconds with a look of intense concentration, and reached for his notes. Maggie left him hunched over the computer, muttering to himself as he typed.  
  
Even a partial success on their first attempt seemed a promising sign for the future, and Maggie was in a mood to celebrate. Conveniently, she had arranged to meet Riley at the Sheraton that evening. There was just enough time left to go home and change first.  
  
Riley was waiting for her in the restaurant, at the back table she'd come to think of as "theirs." He had a beer in front of him, and an unopened bottle of Perrier waiting for her. It was a familiar enough sight, but something about his posture set off a mild alarm in Maggie's mind.  
  
"Is something the matter?" she asked as he stood to greet her.  
  
He looked nervous and young for a moment, then set his jaw and assumed a grimly determined expression.  
  
"I want to ask you something," he said.  
  
"That's an ominous way to begin a conversation," Maggie joked, or at least tried to. Riley did not smile.  
  
"How long have we been together now?"  
  
Maggie blinked at him. "_That's_ what you want to ask?"  
  
"No. Bear with me, okay? I'm working my way up to it."  
  
Maggie thought back to their recent conversations, and Riley's repeated attempts to make their dates either more romantic or more domestic. He wasn't going to propose or something, was he? It would be just like him. The notion was appalling, amusing and attractive, all at the same time, though ,of course, a gentle refusal was the only possible response. Maggie composed her face into a kindly expression as she answered his question.  
  
"About two months now."  
  
"So why does it still have to be like this?" He made a sweeping gesture with one arm, including their table, the restaurant, the hotel, and possibly all of Ft. Tyrone, under the heading of "this." Maggie suppressed her impatience with an effort. They'd had this conversation before.  
  
"We've talked about this, Riley. I know I've explained that--"  
  
"Yeah, I know, you've explained. We have to be discreet. You keep saying that. What I want to know is, why? I'm not your patient anymore. We're not in the same chain of command. We're not cheating on anybody. We're not doing anything wrong at all. Maybe I'm missing the subtleties of the situation here, but _why_ do we have to be discreet?"  
  
Maggie's irritation grew. Under different circumstances, she might've spoken less sharply. But she'd been in such a good mood only moments before, and now it was spoiled. And Riley's pleading puppy-dog look, which she usually found rather endearing, suddenly seemed pathetic and ridiculous. This was no way for a grown man to look during an adult conversation.  
  
"What do you suggest we do, Riley? Post an ad in the _Stars and Stripes_?"  
  
"Of course not." He actually looked hurt at that. "I'm not saying everyone in the world must know immediately, or else. I just don't want to sneak around anymore. I want my friends to meet you. I want to put a picture of you on my desk. When Forrest asks why I can't hang out on Saturday night, I want to say, 'Sorry, I have plans with Maggie.' Is this really so unreasonable?"  
  
For someone who intended to make a lifelong career in the Army, he was remarkably naïve about it. Maggie did not consider herself particularly military, but even she had quickly learned how powerful the social grapevine was on a base. If one person knew, everyone knew. And proof or no proof, the suspicion of doctor-patient impropriety would be there. Maggie could only imagine how Seville and the rest of her colleagues in Psychiatric would react. Angleman's reaction did not bear imagining.   
  
And then there was the matter of the project, and her security clearance. She had been warned repeatedly, by grim-faced men in dark suits, to avoid all "appearance of impropriety" in her personal and professional life. They never explained what constituted an "appearance of impropriety," but Maggie strongly suspected that this would qualify.  
  
Trying to explain this to Riley, however, even without the classified information, seemed like a futile endeavor. Maggie could only shake her head.  
  
"You don't understand..."  
  
"No. I don't. I'm completely failing to understand what the problem is. Are you ashamed of us?"   
  
"This is a difficu--"  
  
"You are, aren't you?" Riley's eyes widened for a moment, then narrowed to angry slits. "You're ashamed."  
  
"That's not--"  
  
"What is it, exactly? Do you actually think we're doing something wrong? Or are you just afraid of what people might think?"  
  
"Keep your voice down," Maggie snapped. "People are staring." That wasn't actually true, but he was getting a little too loud for comfort, and a preemptive strike seemed like a good idea.  
  
The authoritative tone had its usual effect on Riley, despite his agitation. "Sorry," he muttered, and sat up a little straighter.  
  
"Is there anything else you'd like to accuse me of?" Maggie asked coldly. "Or may I actually say something now?"  
  
"I don't like to accuse you of anything. I'm just trying to--" Riley broke off and rubbed his forehead with one hand, as if trying to push back an incipient headache. "Never mind. I'm sorry. I don't mean to keep interrupting you. Go ahead."  
  
"Thank you." Maggie maintained her icy tone. "As I was saying, this is a difficult situation. Other people's opinions may not matter to you now, but opinions have a way of becoming entrenched. Somewhere down the road you're going to apply for a staff position, a security clearance, a sensitive project... and someone is going to look at your application and remember every unfavorable thing they've ever heard about you. And it won't matter if it's only rumor, or if no one can prove anything. They'll remember. And given a choice between you and someone else who looks just as good on paper, they'll take the candidate with the spotless reputation. That's how these things work."  
  
"So what?" Riley brushed her objections aside with a dismissive wave that made Maggie want to smack him. "This kind of garbage goes on all the time. One day someone's going to look at an application from me and reject it because I made a typo on page three, or because I was in therapy once, or because I spilled my bourbon on the rocks all over General Bryce's wife at last year's Christmas party. I'm not going to worry about it."  
  
"Well, I am," Maggie said sharply. "It doesn't just affect you, Riley. I care about my work too. I'm not going to throw it away just so you can take me to the movies."  
  
"I see," Riley said softly. He ducked his head, hiding his expression from her, and turned his beer mug around and around in his hands, but made no move to drink. When he finally looked up, his face was as flatly expressionless as his voice. "So that's all there is for us, then? Sneaking around in cheap hotels, with an occasional expensive hotel thrown in for special occasions?"  
  
Maggie could only shrug. "What do you suggest?"  
  
He didn't answer for a long time, long enough for Maggie to get an unpleasant hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach. "I suggest," he said finally, "that it's time I stopped threatening your reputation with unsightly spots."  
  
The hollow feeling grew worse. Maggie felt as if she might collapse inward around the cold vacuum inside her. She took a breath, trying to fill the emptiness with air. Calm. She needed to be calm. Riley was obviously too agitated to think straight, but if she just spoke to him rationally...  
  
"Riley. You're overreacting. I realize this is not an ideal arrangement, but we've made it work so far. Maybe we can come up with something better, but not if you just give up the effort."  
  
Riley was shaking his head even before she finished speaking. "I don't want a better arrangement. I don't want an _arrangement_ at all. I want..." He sighed. "I guess it doesn't matter what I want. It's obviously not what you want." His expression softened a little. "I'm sorry, Maggie. This isn't how I'd intended this conversation to end. But maybe it's really better this way."  
  
_He's dumping me._ It was a ludicrous thought. She was a middle-aged woman, a scientist and an Army officer. She had two doctorates and a higher security clearance than most of Congress. And she was sitting at a back table in a hotel restaurant while a boy half her age gave her the "let's be friends" speech. She had to clap one hand across her mouth to hold back the laughter.  
  
"Maggie?" Riley leaned toward her, eyes wide with concern. "Are you okay?"  
  
"I'm fine," she said automatically. Calm. She needed to be calm. She put her hands on the table, palms down. The cheap vinyl tablecloth felt rough against her skin. She made herself focus on that texture and on the pattern of red and white checks, until her breathing steadied.  
  
"I'm sorry you feel this way," she told Riley. Her own voice sounded as if it was coming from far away, but it was even and cool. "But perhaps you're right. I wish you well."  
  
She stood up, retrieved her coat and pocketbook, pulled on her gloves. She was composed now, her motions smooth and controlled. Riley said her name once or twice, but she didn't look at him. There didn't seem to be any point. She buttoned her coat with perfectly steady hands and walked out of the restaurant.  
  
It was raining outside, a steady gray drizzle that turned the remnants of last month's snow into lumpy slush. Maggie waded though it toward her car, climbed in, and went through the familiar motions of pulling on her driving gloves and turning on the ignition. The swish of windshield wipers against glass sounded unnaturally loud as she steered the car out of the Sheraton lot.  
  
She drove with no thought to direction or destination, taking random turns onto random streets. It seemed important to keep moving, though she couldn't quite say why. She didn't speed, didn't run any lights or stop signs, didn't cut anyone off. But she stopped only when she had to.  
  
Eventually, the warning light on the gas gauge lit up. Maggie pulled into a Mobil station, told the pimply teenage attendant to fill up the tank, and took stock of her surroundings for the first time.  
  
She had no idea where she was. The road was a generic two-lane highway with generic strip malls on either side, not a single familiar landmark that she could see. Feeling foolish and irritated with herself, Maggie leaned out the window and asked the attendant which road she was on, and in which town.  
  
As it turned out, she was only twenty miles southeast of Ft. Tyrone, not far at all, considering how long she'd been driving. She must've gone in circles part of the time.   
Unfortunately, she had crossed into the next county somewhere along the way, falling off the edge of the county map she kept in the glove compartment. The thought of asking directions from the smirking attendant was too humiliating to bear; Maggie paid for the gas in silence, then went into the station's small shop and purchased a road atlas.  
  
The enforced stop snapped her out of her earlier mental daze. As she turned the car toward home, Maggie began to feel an anger building beneath her layer of calm, anger not at Riley but at herself. Riley was just a young man being foolish. It was what young men did. Years of dealing with Michael had taught her that. She should've known better than to get involved with him. But she'd allowed herself to be swayed by impulse, by the lingering remains of holiday depression, by the pleasant novelty of being desired, by -- no point in being coy about it -- the great sex. She had neglected what was really important -- her work -- in favor of a meaningless distraction.  
  
Maggie shook her head as she considered how little time she'd spent at the lab over the past few weeks. This was possibly the most important phase of the project, the time when the foundation for success or failure would be established, and she had pretty much handed the reins to Angleman while she occupied her time sneaking in and out of hotels with Riley. It was pathetic. And it was over. She would go home and get a good night's sleep; and in the morning she would go to the lab and start catching up on all the work she'd let lapse recently. And she would not think at all about Riley Finn.  
  
  
  
  
  
It was after ten o'clock when Maggie finally got home. Unexpectedly, the light on her answering machine was flashing. Maggie frowned in puzzlement as she counted the blinks. Five messages. More than she normally got in a month. The possibilities were limited: the lab, the hospital, or Riley. Each option had its own set of unpleasant anxieties attached. Maggie felt her mouth go dry even as she reached out to press the play button.  
  
"Dr. Walsh? This is Dr. Hughes from the Medical Center. Please call back as soon as you're able. Your son is awake, and he's asking to speak with you."  
  
Maggie stood frozen in place, her coat half-unbuttoned, her gloves clutched, forgotten, in her left hand. The words "Your son is awake" echoed over and over in her head, but the meaning refused to sink in. She knew she should be having an emotional reaction of some sort, but all she felt was a cold numbness. She stared down at the answering machine. The light kept blinking. There was a beep followed by the soft whirr of advancing tape, then the next message began.  
  
"Dr. Walsh? This is Dr. Hughes again. Please come to the hospital as soon as you get this message. This is an emergency."  
  
The roads were empty this time of night, which was probably a blessing. Maggie might've killed somebody, driving at an earlier hour. She didn't really recall the drive, didn't recall her arrival at the hospital; her first clear memory after hearing the message was of walking into the ICU with Dr. Hughes at her side. Hughes was saying something about kidney failure, blood toxicity levels, dialysis... Maggie couldn't concentrate on the words. She could only look at Michael. The ICU ward was larger and more brightly lit than his usual room, and none of his personal belongings had been moved with him. The stark new surroundings made him look more frail than ever. He'd lost weight, Maggie realized, and she hadn't even noticed until now. Yet another vitally important thing she'd neglected recently. Yet another mistake she'd never repeat.  
  
He'd been awake for less than half an hour, according to the nurses. They'd tried to convince her that she couldn't have made it in time to speak to him, not even if she'd been home to take the call, but Maggie knew it wasn't true. She'd made that drive often enoough to know exactly how long it took. She could've been there for Michael if she hadn't spent the evening moping in her car.  
  
Apparently she managed to nod at the right places in Dr. Hughes' speech, because he finally muttered some vague words of comfort and left her alone. Maggie sat down next to Michael's bed, and took his hand. His fingers felt like dry twigs, ready to snap at the slightest pressure. Maggie knew without a shadow of a doubt that he'd never survive dialysis.  
  
"I'm sorry," she said hoarsely. "I know I failed you. But I'll make up for it." Even as she made the promise, she realized how she could do it. All her years of work had been building up to this moment. Human frailty could be corrected by scientific means. She patted Michael's hand. "You'll be all better. We'll be together again.   
  
"And it will be perfect."  
  
  
  
  
EPILOGUE  
  
Fort Bragg, NC  
Three years later  
  
Riley Finn had never been so dirty in his entire life. There was dirt on his fatigues, dirt _in_ his fatigues, dirt in his hair, dirt in his ears, dirt in places he really didn't want to think about. He was soaking wet, too, and his whole body felt as if it had been vigorously beaten with a baseball bat, but it was the dirt that bothered him most, because inspection was in ten minutes and all the shower stalls were full.  
  
All the benches were full too, occupied by exhausted soldiers in various stages of undress, so he slumped against the wall, lifted his left foot, and tugged at his boot. It wouldn't budge.   
  
"Hell." He tugged again, with the same results. His feet were too swollen after a six hour march over rocky ground, in full battle gear, with a 45-pound ruck on his back. The Major in charge of the exercise had actually looked happy when it started to rain. He had looked even happier when Riley had lost his footing on a particularly steep slope and finished that leg of the trip on his ass. Evil bastard.  
  
Riley looked over to his left, where Forrest appeared to be having similar difficulties with his footwear. "Help me out, will you?"  
  
"Fuck you, man." Forrest scowled at him. "I've got my own problems here."  
  
"I'll help you with yours if you help me with mine."  
  
"Fine, whatever."  
  
After a few seconds of tugging and grunting, Riley's left boot came off with a loud squelching sound. Both men had to catch themselves against the wall to keep from falling.  
  
"Thanks." Riley took the boot from Forrest and turned it over. About a gallon of dirt came out, with a couple of pebbles and a generous helping of twigs mixed in. Riley poked at the mess with his shod foot, half expecting to find a few of his toes among the debris. "Remind me again why we wanted to be Special Forces?"  
  
"'Cause chicks dig the green beret," Forrest told him solemnly. Riley nodded.  
  
"Of course. I keep forgetting."  
  
They were on the sixth day of the second week of the Special Forces Assessment and Selection program, and the officers and NCOs in charge of the torture delighted in telling them how much worse the last and final week was going to be. The First Sergeant, in particular, would always get an especially maniacal grin as he told gruesome tales of what was coming. Riley was starting to see that grin in his nightmares.  
  
Forrest was apparently getting the hang of this boot removal business, because the right one came off quicker than the left. Riley breathed a deep sigh of relief as he peeled off the tattered remains of his socks.  
  
"Ugh." Forrest waved one hand in front of his face. "I see you're all set for the chemical warfare exercise. Get those things away from me, man, and help me out."  
  
Just as he spoke, Lukas limped out of his shower stall, patting himself with a towel.  
  
"Mine!" Riley barked, and dove into the vacated stall before anyone else could grab it.   
  
"Hey!" Forrest yelled. "Get back here and take my boots off, motherfucker!"  
  
"Soon as I'm finished." Riley turned the water on, unmindful of the fact that he was still dressed. The fatigues were already soaked through from the rain and were going straight into the laundry anyhow, so what difference did it make?  
  
Blessedly hot water poured over his head, and Riley sighed with contentment as he began to remove his BDU. About seven minutes left till inspection now. He took off his jacket and dropped it at his feet, followed by his shirt. Six minutes. He could do this.  
  
"Finn!" Major Troy's eardrum-shattering voice rang through the shower room, making everyone jump. "Get your ass out here!"  
  
_What the hell_? Riley stumbled out of the stall and snapped to attention in front of the Major. Was he in some kind of trouble? He couldn't remember doing anything wrong. He was too tired to do anything wrong.  
  
"At ease," Troy said, and Riley relaxed his stance, though he certainly wasn't feeling relaxed. He didn't need to hear the other soldiers' muffled snickering to imagine what a sight he presented, standing there in nothing but a pair of soaking wet camo pants, dripping muddy water all over the floor. Major Troy was looking at him as if he was a particularly nasty insect, but Major Troy looked at everybody like that, so that was okay.  
  
"Colonel Donato wants to see you." Troy threw a set of clean fatigues at Riley's chest. He managed to catch them before they fell into a puddle on the floor. "Right now."  
  
That didn't sound too good. Riley wracked his brains as he changed clothes under the Major's impatient eye, trying desperately to figure out how he might've screwed up. Oh, well, no way to find out until he got there... There were no clean boots to go with the clean clothes, so he put his old ones back on and followed Troy out into the corridor.  
  
Colonel Donato was in his office, appearing no more ferocious than usual. And standing next to his desk, looking very crisp and authoritative in her uniform, was--  
  
_Maggie?_ Maybe he was hallucinating from exhaustion. He'd thought about her from time to time over the past three years, with varying degrees of affection, regret and embarrassment, but he hadn't expected to see her again. Especially not in Ft. Bragg. Maybe this was the trouble he was in... But Maggie didn't seem worried or upset or angry. Riley gathered his scattered wits, saluted, and stood at attention again.  
  
"At ease, soldier," Colonel Donato growled. "I believe you know Colonel Walsh here?"  
  
_Colonel?_ For the first time, Riley took in the silver eagles on Maggie's shoulders. That was fast. Riley had felt pretty damn pleased with himself when he made First Lieutenant two ago, and he already knew he was on the promotion list for Captain once he was out of SFAS. But Maggie, apparently, was on a real fast track.  
  
"Good to see you again, Lieutenant," she said. Her voice was cool and impersonal. "You look well."  
  
Riley was well aware that he looked like something the cat dragged in, but he said "Thank you, ma'am," and did his best to match Maggie's tone.   
  
"Colonel Walsh has a job offer for you," Donato told him.  
  
"Strictly a volunteer assignment," Maggie said smoothly. "You don't have to take it. But I think it will be an excellent opportunity for you.  
  
Riley shifted his feet, feeling slightly uncomfortable. Maggie was a psychiatrist; what kind of job could she possibly have for him? Research? He hoped she didn't expect him to say "yes" just for her sake. He didn't join the Army just so he could shuffle papers in a lab somewhere.  
  
No, that was stupid. He only had a B.S., and his academic record was good but not exceptional. No one in her right mind would pick him for a research project. But what else could it be, with Maggie in charge?  
  
He had to say something; both Maggie and Donato were looking at him expectedly. Riley cleared his throat.  
  
"Uhm... what kind of job is it, m'am?"  
  
"I'm afraid I can't give you the details yet," Maggie said. "Not until we upgrade your security clearance. I can tell you that it's a combined forces project, deep undercover. There _will_ be combat duty."  
  
Combat? Maggie was in charge of a combat mission? That made no sense. A thousand questions crowded Riley's mind, but he held them in check. The answers would be waiting on his security clearance, no doubt.  
  
"You'll get to pick your own team," Maggie continued, "subject to my approval. There will be six months of training before the assignment begins. If you complete the training program successfully, you'll be put in charge of the combat team, answering directly to me. Do your job well, and I can guarantee you a Below the Zone promotion to Major after two years." She smiled. "You may find, once you start the program, that SFAS is a picnic by comparison. But I have every confidence in you."  
  
It sounded... hot shit is what it sounded like. Everything he'd hoped for when he volunteered for SF, only more so. Covert ops. Guaranteed BZ promotion. Top secret clearance. Combat. Okay, the idea of working for an ex-girlfriend was kind of awkward, but Maggie sure as hell wasn't acting like an ex-girlfriend, and it was all water under the bridge anyhow, wasn't it? They were professionals.  
  
Riley stood up a little straighter, and gave both Colonels his best, most eager grin.  
  
"Where do I sign?"  
  
  
_**The End**_  
  


   [1]: MAILTO:mcq79@hotmail.com



End file.
